616 REPOET— 1882. 



is a lesser desert called Takla-makan with 100,000 square miles of area. It may 

 probably be found that these two deserts join or are otherwise connected. 



In the third place we have noted that while the prevaUiug characteristics of our 

 plateau are wildness, ruggedness, or desolation, yet within it are the sources of 

 several great rivers which sustain the most teeming peoples on the face of the 

 earth. The monarch as it were of aU these noble waters is the Yang-tse-Kiang. 

 Though its head streams have been but imperfectly explored, yet its true source is 

 known to be in the Kuen-lun mountains already mentioned. After quitting our 

 plateau 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 population 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 unfailing, and this most essential 

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

 of our plateau, within which it has a course of 700 miles before entering China proper. 

 Amidst the same Kueu-lun range, the Iloang-ho rises, from imexplored springs, 

 which the Chinese figure to themselves as ' the starry sea.' After burstmg through 

 several ranges, making wondrous bends fi'om its main direction near the base 

 of our plateau, and changing its course more than once to the confusion of com- 

 parative geography, it tra^"erses Northern China and confers agricultural prosperity 

 on some 70,000,000 of souls. It also has a course of some 400 miles within our 

 plateau, in consequence of which its water-supply is perennially snow-fed. Again, 

 the Irrawaddi and the Mekhong, the former watering Burma and the latter watering 

 Cambodia, rise in the oflshoots of the Kuen-lun. That region, then, in respect of 

 the parentage of important rivers, stands in the first rank. This beneficent circum- 

 stance arises from the direction of subsidiary ranges which admit to this part of 

 our plateau some of the moisture-laden breezes from the Pacific Ocean. 



Similarly the two Indian rivers, the Brahmaputra, and the Indus with its 

 affluent the Sutlej, have their origin at a great distance within our plateau, and 

 their water-supply is indefinitely augmented iu consequence. Notwithstanding the 

 vast volume of their waters, these rivers play an economic part which, though 

 great, is much less than that of the main Chinese rivers. The IBrahmaputra, above 

 its lower course as the Megna, cannot be said to sustain more than 1.5,000,000 

 of people; and the Indus, together with the Sutlej, may support 12,000,000. 

 The Ganges and Jumna, issuing from masses of snow on the southern scarp of 

 our plateau, sustain before their junction at Allahabad a population of 30,000,000 

 — quite irrespective of the deltaic population of the lower Ganges, for whom 

 moisture is supplied from other sources. Of these Indian rivers the waters, per- 

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

 scale. Taken all in all, despite defects, the Ganges Canal is the most imposing 

 example of hydraulic 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, the Jaxartes, and tlieir branches, ending iu the inland sea of Aral. To 

 these, in Persian phrase, the epithet of ' gold-scatterer' or ' wealth dispenser' is 

 felicitously^ applied by the natives. 



Of the rivers rising in the northern section of our plateau, the Amur has possi- 

 bilities of which the future may see the development. But the great rivers of 

 Siberia, such as the Obe, the Yenisei, and the Lena, though flowing through rich 

 soils and aflbrding marvellous facilities for several systems of inland navigation to 

 be connected with each other, yet have their long estuaries in the permanently 

 frost-bound lands of the Tundra, and their mouths in the Arctic waters frozen 

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

 vie with the rivers above mentioned, which flow into the Pacific and Indian Oceans. 

 In the fourth place, the lacustrine system, though not comparable to that of 

 North America or of Central Africa, and not approaching in beauty or interest that 

 of Southern Europe, is yet very considerable. It is not, however, the only one iu 

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



