54 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



My views c< >ncerning the geographical distribution of plants, 

 and the mean degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds 

 of cultivation, had early led me to entertain considerable 

 doub* s regarding the continuity of a great Tartarian plateau be- 

 tween, the Himalaya and the chain of the Altai. This plateau 

 continued to be characterized, as it had been described by 

 Hippocrates, as " the high and naked plains of Scythia, which, 

 without being crowned with mountains, rise and extend to 

 beneath the constellation of the Bear."* Klaproth has the un- 

 deniable merit of having been the first to make us acquainted 

 with the true position and prolongation of two great and 

 entirely distinct chains of mountains, the Kuen-lun and the 

 Thian-schan, in a part of Asia which better deserves to be 

 termed " 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 

 conscious of their volcanic character ; but this highly- gifted 

 investigator of nature, led astray by the hypotheses of the dog- 

 matic and fantastic geology prevalent in his time, and 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, whence all 

 the other Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and which 

 dominates over all the rest of the continent!" 



The erroneous idea of a single boundless and elevated 

 plain, occupying the whole of Central Asia, the " Plateau de 

 la Tartarie" originated in France, in the latter half of the 

 eighteenth century. It was the result of historical combina- 

 tions, 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 thirteenth 

 and fourteenth 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 east coast of China, washed 

 by the great ocean. If a more exact acquaintance with the 

 language and ancient literature of India were of an older date 

 among us than half a century, the hypothesis of this central 

 plateau, occupying the wide space between the Himalaya and 

 * De Aere et Aquis, xcvi. p. 74. 



