620 REPORT— 1882. 



Kobdo, of tlie French missionaries Gatet and Hue in Mongolia, of Father 

 Desgodins in Tibet, of the German Schlagintweit in Turkestan, of the Englishmen 

 Forsyth, Trotter, Johnson, Shaw, Ilayward in the Tarim basin, of Wood in the 

 Pamir, of Ney Elias in Mongolia, of Dilke and Delmar Morgan in Kulja, of Bogle 

 and Manning in Tibet, while teaching us much, have yet left our minds dazed with 

 a sense of what remains to be learnt. Even the trigonometrical determination of the 

 Himalayan summits by the English Surveyors-General, namely, Everest, Waugh, 

 and \^'alker, the researches of Easevi, Stolicska, Godwin- Austen, Thomson, 

 Biddulph, in the same quarter, and the Siberian surveys by the Prussians among 

 the Altai and Tian Shan mountains, have brought us only to the verge of half- 

 discovered or undiscovered countries. The greatest unexplored region in all Asia, 

 namely the Kuen-lun range, lies in the very heart of our plateau. It is remarkable 

 too that if the principal geographical problems awaiting solution in Asia be speci- 

 (ied, such as the true and ultimate sources of the Ploang-ho, the Irrawaddi, the 

 Salwin, the Mekhong, the relation of the San-po with the Brahmaputra, the con- 

 necting links between the Kuen-lun and the Chinese mountain-chains,— they will be 

 found to concern our plateau. 



At a few points only has our plateau been penetrated by geological surveys, 

 namely, in some parts of the Altai and at the western end of the Thian Shan ; 

 and these surveys are Russian. In the Himalayas, the Karakuram, and the 

 Western Kuen-lun, the geologists of the Indian Government have begun their re- 

 searches. But the formations, the strata, the upheavals, tbe denudations, the 

 fluvial action, awaiting scientific examination, are indescribably great. A notion 

 of some of the questions inviting inquiry from the geologist and palaeontologist 

 may be gathered from what has been already said under previous headings in 

 respect to the general desiccation and the subsidence or evaporation of the 

 primeval waters. 



To the naturalist few regions present more surprising opportunities for the 

 observation of the coming, the resting, the departing of migratory birds. 



To meteorologists many of the natural phenomena must prove highly interesting 

 — the causation of the wondrous dryness, the etlects produced on animal comfort 

 by the rarefaction of the air, the mummified bodies dried up without undergoing 

 putrefaction, the clouds of salt-particles driven along by furious gusts and filling 

 the atmosphere, the fires in the parched vegetation of the desert, the spontaneous 

 ignition of coal-beds, the caves emitting sulphurous gases, the rocky girdle of 

 syenite boimding the Gobi desert, the gradual contraction of the glaciers, the 

 ordinarily rainless zones sometimes invaded by rain-storms with a downpour like 

 that of the tropics. 



In the eighth place, our plateau is now under one imperial jurisdiction, and 

 offers many problems for social inquirers. It belontrs entirely to the Chinese 

 empire with the exception of one small tract where the Russian authorities have 

 crossed the mountain border. The geographical features for the most part favour 

 national defence and territorial consolidation. The old Chinese Wall is still suitable 

 to the political geography of to-day. In the Zungarian strait, however, in the 

 Hi vallej' near Kulja, perhaps, also, in the line of the Black Irtish, near Zaisan, the 

 Chinese empire, in its contact with Russia, has weak points strategically, or chinks 

 in its armour. Though the plateau was originally under the Chinese suzerainty, it 

 became, under the Mongolian emperor Chinghiz Khan and his successors, the mis- 

 tress of China, as indeed of all Asia and of Eastern Europe. As the Mongol power, 

 however, shrunk and withered, the Chinese re-asserted themselves. At length, 

 under a dynasty from Manchuria outside our plateau, the Chinese became lords over 

 the regions within its limits. The Zungarian tribe of Eleutbs rose, and after severe 

 military operations were suppressed. The Muhammadan inhabitants of the Tarim 

 basin rebelled against the Chinese Government, and for a while maintained an 

 independent principality for Islam. It was during this time that the British 

 sovereign sent an envoy to Yarkand to conclude a commercial treaty, in 1873. 

 Subsequently the Chinese broke down this rising independence, and the whole 

 region of the Tarim receives its orders from the emperor at Pekin. 



The decline and fall of the Mongol empire, the disruption of that wide-spread 



