DRINKING. OROGRAPHY. 13 



allowance. This tea-drinking was a great nuisance 

 to us, particularly when we were in a hurry to 

 proceed on our journey ; but nothing would induce 

 either Mongol or Cossacks to stir till they had 

 boiled their tea and refreshed themselves with long 

 draughts of this beverage. Finding that the spirits 

 of the party often depended on the consumption of 

 tea, particularly of the whitened kind, I made up my 

 mind to submit to it. 



Our route in the valley of the Hoang-ho skirted 

 the border range which extended as an uninterrupted 

 wall as far as the river Haliutai. Here the moun- 

 tains suddenly become much lower, in fact are no 

 higher than hillocks, and retreat to one side of the 

 abrupt cliff which continues to define the valley of 

 the river. These hillocks serve as connecting links 

 between the mountains on the border and the 

 Sheiten-ula chain, which extends eastwards as far as 

 the river Kunduling-gol. The latter is a low but 

 rocky and treeless range, as far as we could see very 

 deficient in water. 



Almost on the meridian of the western termina- 

 tion of the Sheiten-ula rise the westernmost spurs 

 of the Munni-ula. Between these two chains of 

 mountains lies the broad valley of the Hoang-ho, 

 thickly populated by Chinese. A belt of sand-drifts 

 here prepares the traveller coming from the east for 

 the frightful deserts of Ordos and Ala-shan. 



At the Kunduling-gol we rejoined the track of 

 our outward journey, so that from this point forward 

 we had the benefit of a map and travelled no longer 



