ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OP ASIA. 59 



tween the sources of the Selenga and the Chinese wall. A 

 very accurate barometrical levelling was executed, under the 

 auspices of the Academy of St. Petersburgh, by two distin- 

 guished savans the astronomer George Fuss, and the bota- 

 nist Bunge. They accompanied a mission of Greek monks to 

 Pekin, in the year 1832, in order to establish there one of 

 those magnetic stations whose construction I had recom- 

 mended. The mean height of this portion of the Desert of 

 Gobi amounts hardly to 4263 feet, and not' to 8000 or 8500 

 feet, as had been too hastily concluded from the measure- 

 ments of contiguous mountain summits by the Jesuits Ger- 

 billon and Verbiest. The surface of the Desert of Gobi is not 

 more than 2558 feet above the level of the sea between Erghi, 

 Durma, and Scharaburguna ; and scarcely more than 320 

 feet higher than the plateau of Madrid. Erghi is situated 

 midway, in 45 31' north lat., and 111 26' east long., in a 

 depression of the land extending in a direction from south- 

 west to north-east over a breadth of more than 240 miles. 

 An ancient Mongolian saga designates this spot as the 

 former site of a large inland sea. Reeds and saline plants, 

 generally of the same species as those found on the low shores 

 of the Caspian Sea, are here met with; \vhile there are in 

 this central part of the desert several small saline lakes, the salt 

 of which is carried to China. According to a singular opinion 

 prevalent among the Mongols, the ocean will at some period 

 return, and again establish its dominion in Gobi. Such geo- 

 logical reveries remind us of the Chinese traditions of the 

 bitter lake, in the interior of Siberia, of which I have else- 

 where spoken .* 



The basin of Kashmir, which has been so enthusiasti- 

 cally praised by Bernier, and too moderately estimated by 

 Victor Jacquemont, has also given occasion to great hyp- 

 sometric exaggerations. Jacquemont found by an accu- 

 rate barometric measurement that the height of the Wulur 

 Lake, in the valley of Kashmir, near the capital Sirinagur, 

 was 5346 feet. Uncertain determinations by the boiling 

 point of water gave Baron Carl von Hugel 5819 feet, and 

 Lieutenant Cunningham only 5052 feet.f The mountainous 



* Humboldt, Asie centrale, t. ii. p. 141; Klaproth, Asie polyglotta, 

 p. 232. 



*t* Compare my Asie centrale, t. iii. p. 310, with the Journal of the 

 Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, vol. x. 1841, p. 114. 



