APPENDIX. 



at us above the vast loess hills on our right. Here, of course, the climate is 

 cool and alpine, and enormous virgin forests clothe the mountains — a strange 

 sight, after many weoks of bare and arid loess. This range is one of the enormous 

 ripples in which the Kwun Lun dies away eastwards into China. It runs roughly 

 parallel to the Min S'an farther north, and between them intervenes a ridge 

 of some 10,000 feet, cutting off the Black Water from the Satanee River. From 

 the heights of the pass at last the big snows came into sight, the Satanee 

 range, on whose final vertebrae we stood, towering away to the left in magni- 

 ficent peaks and wildernesses of white, while in front, over the intervening 

 mountains, rose the overwhelming mass of Thundercrown, sheer above Siku, — 

 last outbreak of the Min S'an splendours which, to match those of the Satanee, 

 unfolded themselves westward in ever-increasing magnitude far away into the 

 wild heart of Tibet, 



All this gorgeous country, being alpine, is despised by the practical-minded 

 Chinese, who abandon it wholly to the savagery of unkempt Border tribes. We 

 had trouble accordingly at Chago, left it hurriedly on 8th May, and by 13th May 

 were ensconced comfortably in a small temple at Satanee, in a friendly village 

 under Chinese sway. From this, however, when we had just begun to get our 

 teeth into the riches of the snowy range, now just opposite, we were driven by 

 a general Jehad organised from Chago by the monks, under the conviction 

 that our investigations were annoying the mountain spirits. The White Wolf 

 was now raging in Kansu, and our position was critical. However, we decided 

 on the least of the many threatened evils, and made straight over the inter- 

 vening range to Siku, on chance of finding the rumour false that declared the 

 Wolf in full possession and the town sacked. 



On 22nd May we entered the storm-tossed little city of Siku, sitting so snug 

 beside the Black Water, embosomed in groves of willow and persimmon, with 

 gaunt and sunburnt hills of loess all around ; and behind, overhead, the colossal 

 impending mass of Thundercrown and the huge ridge in which, after Thunder- 

 crown, the Min S'an dies away eastwards as the Satanee range dies away east- 

 wards from Chagola. Reference to a map will show that we were now once 

 more quite near Kiai Chow, having rejoined the Black Water a little farther 

 north-west, and thus described a long and irregular narrow rectangle down 

 through the last descending tip of Kansu. Berezowski, it will be remembered, 

 had visited both the Siku and Satanee districts in 1886, spending the winter 

 zoologising at Satanee ; while at Siku they vividly remember him to this day, 

 as having stolen a moon of theirs that lived in a stone and was never seen after 

 his departure. Even the Herbarium yield, however, of the Potanin expedi- 

 tions, is still for the most part a rudis indigestaque moles ; these districts have 

 proved very fertile of interesting and beautiful plants, many of which are prob- 

 ably new to herbaria, and yet more of them to cultivation. 



Siku, Shi-ho and Wen Hsien were the only three towns of South Kansu 

 left untouched and unvisited by the White Wolf. All the early summer Siku 

 6at secure in utter isolation, cut off from all intercourse with the ravaged 

 outside world, and sufficiently occupied on its own account with repelling 



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