408 MOUNTAIN TABLE-LANDS OF LADAK. 



great feature; the sun's direct rays are hotter than in India, 

 while the afternoon winds are piercingly cold, and except in 

 summer it freezes every night." * 



Mr. Knight in further describing it says, 

 " Ladak, like Chinese Thibet is for the most part a desert 

 of bare craigs and granite dust a land where there are no 

 forests or pastures, where in places one can march through 

 a long summer day and never see so much as a blade of 

 grass; a cloudless region, always burning, or freezing, under 

 the clear blue sky : for so thin and devoid of moisture is the 

 atmosphere that the variations of temperature are extreme, 

 and rocks exposed to the sun's rays may be too hot to lay 

 the hand upon, at the same time that it is freezing in the 

 shade." f 



In our section on Climates and Temperatures we 

 have, as the reader will doubtless remember, not failed 

 to lay considerable stress upon these rapid alternations 

 of temperature, which are invariably found to succeed 

 each other in dry and highly elevated regions: and 

 nowhere is the truth of this phenomenon more clearly 

 illustrated than in these mighty elevated table lands, 

 which form such remarkable features in Thibet, Ladak, 

 and other Himalayan hill states which undoubtedly 

 constitute the highest inhabited regions in the world. 



It is here in consequence that the rapid variations 

 between extreme heat and cold are most sudden and 

 trying the power of the sun's rays being actually 

 more felt than upon the plains of India, while the 

 instant that they are withdrawn, one is in the arctic 

 regions. In South America for instance, the tropical 

 sun may be blazing overhead in fiery glory, heating 



* Encycl. Brit., Vol. xiv., p. 197 (Art. "Ladak"). 

 j Where Three Empires Meet (Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, etc.), by 

 E. F. Knight, 1893, pp. 105 6. 



