74 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



My views concerning the geographical range of plants, and the 

 mean degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds of cultiva- 

 tion, had early led me to entertain considerable doubts as to the 

 continuity of a great Tartarian plateau between the Himalaya and 

 the Altai. Writers continued to characterize this plateau as it had 

 been described by Hippocrates (De ^Ere et Aquis, xcvi. p. 74), 

 as "the high and naked plains of Scythia, which, without being 

 crowned with mountains, rise and extend to beneath the constella- 

 tion of the Bear." Klaproth has the undeniable merit of having 

 been the first to make us acquainted with the true position, extent, 

 and direction of two great and entirely distinct chains of mountains 

 the Kuen-lun and the Thian-schan, in a part of Asia which is 

 better entitled to the name of " central" than Kashmeer, Baltistan, 

 and the Sacred Lakes of Thibet (the Manasa and the Ravanahrada). 

 The importance of the Celestial Mountains, the Thian-schan, had 

 indeed been already surmised by Pallas, without his being aware of 

 their volcanic nature ; but this highly-gifted investigator of nature, 

 hampered by the then prevailing hypothesis of a dogmatic and fan- 

 tastic geology, firmly believing in "chains of mountains radiating 

 from a centre," saw in the Bogdo Oola (the Mons Augustus, or 

 culminating point of the Thian-schan) such a "central node, from 

 whence all the Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and which 

 dominates over all the rest of the continent !" 



The erroneous idea of a single vast elevated plain occupying the 

 whole of Central Asia, the (f Plateau de la Tartarie," took its rise in 

 France, in the latter half of the 18th century. It was the result of 

 historical combinations, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of 

 the writings of the celebrated Venetian traveller, as well as of the 

 naive relations of those diplomatic monks who, in the 13th and 14th 

 centuries, (thanks to the unity and extent of the Mogul empire at 

 that time,) were able to traverse almost the whole of the interior of 

 the continent, from the ports of Syria and of the Caspian Sea to the 

 shores of the Pacific on the east coast of China. If a more exact 

 acquaintance with the language and ancient literature of India had 

 dated farther back among us than half a century, the hypothesis of 

 this central plateau, occupying the wide space between the Hima- 

 laya and the south of Siberia, would no doubt have had adduced in its 

 support an ancient and venerable authority from that source. The 



