ILLUSTRATIONS (10). THE PLATEAUX OF ASIA. 61 



Actual plains are very few in number : the most considerable 

 are those between Gertop. Daba, Schang-thung (the Shep- 

 herd's Plain), the native country of the shawl-goat, and 

 Schipke (10,449 feet); those round Ladak, which attain an 

 elevation of 13,429 feet, and must not be confounded with 

 the depressed land in which the town lies; and finally, the 

 plateau of the Sacred Lakes, Manasa and Ravanahrada (pro- 

 bably 14,965 feet), which was visited by Father Antonio de 

 Andrada as early as the year 1625. Other parts are entirely 

 filled with compressed mountain masses, " rising," as a recent 

 traveller observes, " like the waves of a vast ocean." Along 

 the rivers, the Indus, the Sutledge, and the Yaru-dzangbo- 

 tschu, which was formerly regarded as identical with the 

 Buramputer (or correctly the Brahma-putra), points have 

 been measured which are only between 6714 and 8952 feet 

 above the sea ; and the same is the case with the Thibetian 

 villages Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and Murung.* From many 

 carefully collected determinations of heights, I think that 

 we are justified in assuming that the plateau of Thibet 

 between 73 and 85 east long, does not attain a mean 

 elevation of 11,510 feet: this is hardly the elevation of the 

 fruitful plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 1349 and 2155 

 feet less than the plateau of Titicaca, and of the street pave- 

 ment of the Upper Town of Potosi (13,665 feet). 



That beyond the Thibetian highlands and the Gobi, whose 

 outline has been already defined, Asia presents considerable 

 depressions, and indeed true lowlands, between the parallels 

 of 37 and 48, where once an immeasurable continuous 

 plateau was fabulously supposed to exist, is proved by the 

 cultivation of plants which cannot flourish without a cer- 

 tain degree of temperature. An attentive study of the travels 

 of Marco Polo, in which mention is made of the cultivation 

 of the vine, and of the production of cotton in northern lati- 

 tudes, had long ago directed the attention of the acute 

 Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese work, bearing the title 

 Information respecting the recently conquered Barbarians (Sin- 

 kiang-wai-tan-ki-lio), it is stated that " the country of Aksu, 

 somewhat to the south of the Celestial Mountains, near the 

 rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, 

 pomegranates, and numberless other fruits of singular excel 

 * Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. iii. pp. 281325. 



