TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 617 



Baikal, and of Balkasb, which, though connected with our plateau, are beyond its 

 actual limits. Exclusive 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 lakes, however, some are insignificant, 

 being little more than saline swamps. Others, again, as the Pangong, though 

 romantically beautiful — reposing at an altitude equal to that of the highest 

 European, mountains, and reflecting the perennial snow of surrounding peaks — do 

 not illustrate specially any geographical prol)lem or produce any economic 

 result. But some may be selected as having a scientific interest irrespective of 

 beauty or of strangeness. 



The Lake Victoria, discovered by Wood in 1838, rests in the heart of the Pamir, 

 already mentioned, at an elevation of 15,000 feet above .sea-level. It is frozen over 

 during the greater part of the year, and lies with a glistening 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 protracted and 

 toilsome ascent from the barren or deserted plains of Ariana. It is the source of 

 the Oxus, and is near the point of contact between the British and the Russian 

 political systems in Asia. 



In the sharpest contrast to the highly-placed Pamir lake is the lowly 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 dregs of an inland sea that is mostly dried up, and is, as it 

 were, kept alive only by the Tarim 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, 

 owing to the gradual desiccation, was once more or less productive, and where a 

 population has probably become extinct or has disappeared by migration. 



The Pamir then is a water-parting for two inland seas, one the Aral, beyond 

 our 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 sheet of water 10,000 feet above sea- level, 

 in the eastern section of the Kuen-lim mountains, near the source of the Hoang-ho. 

 Its waters, profound and saline, have a dark azure hue, which is compared by the 

 natives to that of the exquisite silks in Clhina. It is in the Tangut region, men- 

 tioned 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, where- 

 of there are a few widely-scattered remnants, among which the Kuku Nor is one. 



Lastly, a word of passing 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 remote ages, 

 beyond the ken of history, the home of hardy and aggressive Tartars, or, as they may 

 be more properly called, Mongols. These Tartar races, dwelling among the uplands 

 in the lee of the mountains, used for many centuries to emerge and harry the fertile 

 Chinese plains lying between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It was to ward 

 oft' these incursions that the Great Wall was constructed, winding like a vast serpent 

 of stone along the ridges of mountains for 2,000 miles from the Pacific coast to 

 the Siberian confines. The cost and labour expended on this amazing work attest 

 the dread with which the Tartar highlanders had inspired the Chinese lowlanders. 

 Some centuries after the building of the AVall, the most warlike among the Tartar 

 tribes, in the council of their national assembly, acclaimed Temujin as their king, in 

 the year 1206 A.D. He took a title which is translated by Europeans asChinghiz 

 Khan, a title which for two centuries or more was the best known name in the whole 

 world. At the head of his Tartar adherents, he first subdued the other kindred 

 tribes of our plateau. Then he organised and disciplined the whole Tartar man- 

 hood into an army of horsemen. This is the most wonderful instance of military 

 mobilisation known to history ancient or modern. Its results too were equally ap- 



