3G0 



THE CHINESE FRONTIERS. 



CHAPTER 

 XXVIIL 



Baron Humboldt, after a careful exploration of the 

 country, and a comparison of its features with those 

 which he had previously investigated in the New World, 

 arrives at the conclusion that it has an intimate connexion 

 Upheaval of with the upheaving of the Caucasian Mountains, those of 

 mountain!., jjindoo-kho, and of tlie elevated plain of Persia which 

 borders the Caspian Sea and the Mavar-ul-Nahar to the 

 south ; and, perhaps, more to the eastward, with the ele- 

 vation of the great mass of land, which is designated by 

 the vague and incorrect name of the central plain of 

 Asia. This concavity he considers as a crater-country, 

 similar to the Hipparchus, Archimedes, and Ptolmey, of 

 the moon's surface, which have a diameter of more than 

 100 miles, and which may be rather compared with Bo- 

 hemia than with our volcanic cones and craters.* 



In the course of this journey of Baron Humboldt, in 

 company with MM. Ehrenberg and Rose, he passed, in 

 seven weeks, over the frontiers of Chinese Zungaria, be- 

 tween the forts of Oust-Kamenogorsk, and Boukhtar- 

 minsk, and Khonimailakhou (a Chinese post to the north 

 of the Lake Dzaisang), the Cossach line of the Kirghiz 

 steppe, and the shores of the Caspian Sea. In the im- 

 portant commercial towns of Semipolatinsk, Petropa- 

 lauska, Troitzkaia, Orenburg, and Astracan, he obtained 

 from Tartars, Bucharians, and Tachkendis, information 

 respecting the Asiatic regions in tlie vicinity of their na- 

 tive country. At Orenburg, where caravans of several 

 Oeographical thousand camels annually arrive, an enliglitened indi- 

 vidual, M. de Gens, has collected a mass of materials of 

 the highest importance for the geography of Central Asia. 

 Among the numerous description of routes communi- 

 cated bj' this person, o\ir author found the following 



Pnssasje of 

 the Chinese 

 frontiers. 



• It appears, however, tliat Professor Parrot, on the authority of whose 

 barometrical measurements, made in 1811, this opinion was originally 

 ad.iptcd, has since been led to doubt its accuracy. In fact, from obsen-a- 

 tions made by him in 1829 and 1S30, he has found the mouth of the Don, 

 T^hlcli enters the Black Sea, to be between tln'ee and four feet lower than 

 that of tlic Volga, which empties itself into the Caspian. 



