August 31, 1882] 



NATURE 



439 



explored, yet its tiue source is known to be in the Kuen-lun 

 Mountains already mentioned. After quitting our 1 lateau and 

 passing out of its prison-house in the mountains through natural 

 gates of the utmost magnificence, it permeates the most thickly- 

 peopled provinces of China — provinces inhabited by about 120 

 millions of souls. It sustains the life of this enormous popula- 

 tion by supplying the necessary moisture and by affording the 

 means of irrigation and of water-traffic. No river has ever in 

 ancient or modern times played so important a part in the 

 increase of the human race as the Yang-tse-Kiang. Its supply 

 of water is immense and unfailii g, and tbis most essential 

 characteristic is caused by its connection with the snow-clad and 

 I regions of our plateau, within which it has a course of 

 700 miles before entering China proper. Amidst the ;ame 

 Kuen-lun range, the Hoang-ho rises, from unexplored springs, 

 which the Chinese figure to themselves as '* the starry sea." 

 After bursting through several water-sheds, making wondrous 

 bends from its main direction near the base of cur plateau, and 

 changing its course more than once to the confusion of com- 

 parative geography, it traverses Northern China and confers 

 agricultural prosperity on some 70,000,000 of souls. It also has 

 a cour e of some 400 miles within our plateau, in consequence 

 of which its water-supply is perennially snow-fed. Again, the 

 Irawady and the Mekhong, the former watering Burma, and the 

 latter watering Cambodia, rise in the offshoots of the Kuen-lun. 

 That region, then, in respect of the parentage of important 

 rivers stands in the first rank. This beneficent circumstance 

 ari es from the direction of subsidiary ranges which admit to this 

 I art of our plateau some of the moisture-laden breezes from the 

 Pacific Ocean. 



Similarly the two Indian river-, the Brahmapura, and the 

 Indus with its affluent, the Satlej, have their origin at a great 

 distance within our plateau, and their water-supply is indefinitely 

 augmented in consequence. Notwithstanding the vast volume of 

 their waters, these rivers play an economic part w hich, though 

 great, is much less than that of the main Chinese rivers. Tie 

 Brahmaputra above its junction with the Megna cannot be said 

 to sustain more than 15,000,000 of people ; and the Indus, 

 together with the Satlej, may support 12,000,000. The Ganges 

 and Jamna, issuing from masses of snow on the southern scarp of 

 our plateau, sustain before their junction at Allahabad a popula- 

 tion of 30,000,000— quite irrespective of the deltaic populate n 

 of the lower Ganges for wh, m moisture is sup ; lied from other 

 sources. Of these Ii.dian rivers the water;, perpetually snow- 

 fed, are largely drawn away for canals of irrigation on a grand 

 scale. Taken all in all, despi e defects, the Ganges Canal is the 

 most imposing example of h.draulic engineering that has yet 

 been seen. From the glaciers of the Pamir and the western 

 terminus of the Thian Shan there spring the head-streams of the 

 Oxus, tbe Jaxarte-, and other livers, ending in the inland sea of 

 Aral. To these, in Persian phra e, the epithet of "gold- 

 scalterer" or " wealth dispenser " is felicitously applied by the 

 natives. 



Of the rivers rising in the northern section of our plateau, the 

 Amur has possibilities of which the fumre may see the devel jp- 

 ment. But the great rivers of Siberia, such as the Obe, the 

 Yenisei, and the Lena, though flowing through rich soils and 

 affording marvell.us facilities for several systems of inland navi- 

 gation to be connected with each other, yet have their l"iig 

 estuaries in the permanently frost-bound lands of the Tundra, 

 and their mouths in the Arctic w aters frozen during most months 

 of the year. Therefore they can never, in economic importance, 

 vie with tbe rivers above mentioned, which flow into the Pacific 

 and Indian Oceans. 



In the fourth place, the lacustrine system, though not compar- 

 able to that of North America or of Central Africa, and not ap- 

 proach. ng in beauty or interest that of Southern Europe, is \et 

 very considerable. It is not, however, tbe only one in Aria, 

 and from it must be excluded the three great Siberian lakes of 

 Issykkul, of Baikal, and of Balka h, which, though connected 

 with our plateau, are beyond its actual limit-. Exclu-ive of 

 these, however, the lakes, great and small, within our plateau, 

 are extraordinarily numerous. Not less than a hundred of them 

 may be counted on the maps of this region. Of these lal,es, 

 howe\er, some are insignificant, being little more than saline 

 swamps. Others, again, as the Pai gong, though romantically 

 beautiful — reposi g at an altitude equal 10 that of the highest 

 European mountains, and reflecting the 1 erennial snow of sur- 

 roui.ding peaks — do not illustrate specially any geographical 

 problem, nor produce any economic result. But some may be 



selected as having a scientific interest irrespective of beauty or of 

 strangeness. 



The Lake Victoria, di-covered by Wood in 1838, rests in the 

 heart of the Pamir, already mentioned, at an elevation of 14,000 

 feet bbove sea-level. It is frozen over during the greater part of 

 the year, and lies with a gli tening and polished surface in the 

 midst of a snow-whitened waste. In that state it powerfully 

 affects the imagination of the spectator who reaches it as the final 

 goal, after a proracted and toilsome ascent from the barren or 

 deserted plains of Ariana. It is the source of the Oxus, and is 

 near the | oint of contact between the British and the Russian 

 political systems in Asia. 



In the sharpest contrast to a highly-placed Pamir lake is the 

 Lake Lob, already mentioned. Shallow water, sedgy morass, 

 dreary sands, parched forests, the monotony of desolation, are 

 reported to be its characteristics. It apparently consists of the 

 ciregs of an inland sea that is mostly dried up, and is, as it were, 

 kept alive only by the Tariui river, which has its sources in the 

 everlasting snows of the Pamir. Despite the proximity of saline 

 tracts, the lake has fresh water. Near it is a great desert, of 

 which the soil, though now arid and friable, ow ing to the gradual 

 desiccation, was once more or less productive, and where a 

 population has probably bee mie extinct or has disappeared by 

 migration. 



The Pamir then is a water-parting f >r two inland seas, one the 

 Aral, beyond oar plateau, the other Lob Nor within it — both 

 saved from speedy desiccation only by the influx of rivers from 

 the snow line. 



Again in contrast is the Kuku Nor, a -heet of water 10,000 

 feet above sea-level, in the eastern section of the Kuen-lun 

 mountains near the source of the Hoang-ho. Its waters, pro- 

 found ard saline, have a dark azure hue, which is compared by 

 the natives to that of the exquisite silks in China. It is in the 

 Tangut region, mentioned by Marco Polo in his Itinerary. In 

 respect to the lakes in this region, and especially the morasses of 

 Tsaidam, there are geological speculations as to another Asiatic 

 Mediterranean (besides that already mentioned), long since dried 

 up, whereof there are a few widely-scattered remnants, among 

 which the Kuku Nor is one. 



Lastly, a word of pa sing notice may be devoted to two among 

 the Tibetan lakes, that of Tengri, near Lhassa, on the shore of 

 which stands a venerated Buddhist convent, and the Bul-tso, from 

 which have been obtained quantities of the best borax. 



In the fifth place, the north-eastern part of our plateau was 

 during rent' >te ages, beyond the ken of hi tory. the home of hardy 

 and aggressive Tartars. These Tartar races, dwelling among the 

 uplands in he lee 1 f the m untain-, used for many centuries to 

 emerge and harry the fertile Chinese plains lying 1 etween the 

 mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It was to ward off these in- 

 cursions that the Groat W all was constructed, winding like avast 

 serpent of stone along the r.dges of mountains for 2,000 miles 

 fr m the Pacific coast to the Siberian confines. The cost and 

 lab ur expended on tht- amazing work attest the dread with which 

 the Tartar highbinders had in pired the Chinese lowlanders. 

 Some centuries after the building of the Wall, the most warlike 

 among the Tartar tribes, in the cuncil of their nati nal assembly, 

 acclaimed Temujinas their king, in the year 1206 a.d. He took 

 a title which i translated by Europeans as Chinghiz Khan, a title 

 v. huh for two centuries or more was the best known name in the 

 whole w rid. At the head of his Tartar adherent--, he first 

 subdued the other kindred tribes of cur plateau. Then he 

 organised and disciplined the whole Tartar manhood into an 

 army of horsemen. This is the most wonderful instance of 

 military mobilisation known to history ancient or in< dern. Its 

 results too were equally appalling. In medieval times the 

 marches of the Arabs and the Saracens, in modern limes 

 the expeditions of Napoleon, have dazzled Asia or Europe. 

 The-e were hardly, however, equal to the di tant conquests of 

 Alexas,der the Great in ancient times. But even the wars of 

 Alexander were perhaps surpassed by the ravages of Chinghiz 

 Khan and tbe Tartars of our plateau. The countries of China, 

 India, Afghanistan, Bactria, Persia, the Aral-Caspian basin, 

 Siberia, Asia Minor, Russia, were overrun within a hundred 

 years by Chinghiz Khan, his lieu enants, and his immediate 

 descendants. Thus, through the hordes of our plateau there 

 was established a dominion stretching from Cape Comorin near, 

 the equator, to the Arctic Ocean, and from the Pacific shores to 

 the bank- of the Vistula in Poland. The latest historian of the 

 Mongols considers that nothine but the unexpected death of the 

 Tartar soveieign, and the political combinations arising in con- 



