232 EXTENT AND CHARACTER OF ALA-SHAN 



shan or Trans-Ordos.^ This region is covered with 

 bare sand-drift, extending on the west to the River 

 Etsina,^ on the south to the lofty mountains of the 

 province of Kan-su, and on the north disappearing 

 altogether in the unfruitful clay flats of the central 

 Gobi desert. These are the natural as well as the 

 political boundaries of Ala-shan, which is bordered 

 by the Khalka^ and Urute countries on the north, 

 and by the province of Kan-su and a small part of 

 Ordos on the other sides. 



Topographically Ala-shan is a perfectly level 

 plain, which, like Ordos, in all probability once formed 

 the bed of a huge lake or inland sea. This fact is 

 evidenced by the level area of the Avhole region, its 

 hard saline clay and sand-covered soil, and lastly 

 the salt lakes, which are formed in the lowest parts 



maks. The Turgut branch of the Eleuths, early in the eighteenth 

 century, carried their conquests and migrations westward to the 

 Volga ; and it was this horde which in 1771 made that extraordinary 

 re-migration in mass to the Chinese territory of which T. de Quincey 

 has given such an extraordinary description. The Eleuths of Ala-shan 

 were, according to Timkowski, settled there by the emperor Kang-hi 

 in 1686, having been driven from their own seats by Galdan Khan, of 

 Uzungaria. — Y. 



' Trans-Ordos is, I presume, a name given by the traveller himself, 

 but it is a very inconvenient style of nomenclature. The trans in 

 this case is not even from the Russian, but from the Peking stand- 

 point. — Y. 



"^ The Etsina river runs northward into the desert from the \qcinity 

 of Kanchau, and on its banks no doubt stood the city of E/zina, ' on 

 the verge of the Sandy Desert,' of which Marco Polo makes mention 

 in the route to Kara-Korum. — Y. 



^ The Khalkas form another and the most important of the 

 modern great divisions of the Mongol tribes. The name was given 

 apparently in the latter days of the Ming dynasty {circa 1600), to the 

 tribes on the north of the Gobi, then independent of China ; and those 

 bearing it extend over 30 degrees of longitude, from the Manchu 

 country westward to the Hi.— Y. 



