34 PLANTS AND 



scanty. The high rocks and ddbi'is on the hill-sides 

 appeared the same as in winter ; even the ravines 

 in the mountains were very little better. Naked 

 sand, boulders and crumbling rock, a few crooked 

 dwarf elms, wild peach, or clumps of acacia, were 

 the ever-recurring objects which met the travellers' 

 eyes. Even on the banks of some tiny rivulet, 

 which, after flowing a very short distance above 

 ground would quickly hide itself beneath the soil 

 as though it feared to encounter the terrors of the 

 wilderness, the narrow fringe of verdure was mostly 

 devoured by the Mongol goats. 



The boundary of Ala-shan is marked by a line 

 of drift sands, which, as we know, cover the whole 

 of Trans-Ordos. The scantiness of the vegetation, 

 notwithstanding the advanced season (end of May), 

 was even more remarkable here than in the country 

 through which we had passed. Indeed, the aspect 

 of nature hardly differed from that which we had 

 observed late in the previous autumn : here were 

 the same cheerless yellow sands, the same patches 

 of zak, the same clayey hillocks with clumps of 

 stunted karniyk. If perchance some stray flowering 

 grass {SopJiora fiavescens, Ttirnefortia Arguzia, 

 Convolviiltis Ammani, Pegami^n sp., Carduus sp.) 

 appeared, it was only as a stranger or foster-child 

 of so unprolific a parent. Two or three kinds of 

 bushes [Convohitlus tragacanthoides, Nitraj'ia Scho- 

 beri, Calligommi Mongolicum ?) were in flower, but 

 they only grew in clayey spots so far apart as not to 

 brighten the prevailing gloom of the landscape. 



