42 Ml{. n. J. ELWES OS THE 



tributary of the Bashkaus river, whicb, after its junction with 

 the Tchulishman river, flows into the great Lake Teletskoi, a 

 deep mountain-lake about 60 miles long, out of which flows the 

 Bija river, the principal eastern source of the Obb. 



Before quitting the Tchuja iSteppe, however, I must make 

 some remarks upon the character of the country w^e saw from 

 the tops of the mountains tit the sources tf the Obb. These 

 mountains are above 6500 feet, absolutely bare and treeless, 

 though three or four species of willows are found along the 

 streams up to about 7500 feet. They consist of steep, shaly 

 mountains surrounded by great rolling downs of grass. From 

 the tops of these mountains, at about 9000 feet, we could see the 

 sources of the Irtysch aud the Kemchik, which latter flows into 

 the Yenesei, and of the Kobdo river, which loses itself in the 

 Mongolian desert. Eighty or ninety miles to the southward we 

 could see the high snow-peaks of the Southern or Mongolian Altai 

 range, which have, according to the accounts of Russian travellers, 

 dense forests on their sheltered slopes. I am informed that the 

 Beaver occurs there, as it certainly does in the Sayansk moun- 

 tains near the source of the Yenesei. 



To give an idea of the Alpine flora of the South-eastern Altai, 

 I may mention a few of the plants which were most conspicuous 

 for their beauty near our camp on the Darkoti, or Tachety river 

 as Tcbikatcheif spells it, 30 miles south-west of Kuch Agatch, 

 at about 7000 feet. I have never, either in the Alps of Europe, 

 in the Sikkim Himalaya, in Colorado, California, or anywhere 

 else, seen such a ptrlect natural garden of beaut ful alpine 

 flowers as I saw here in the middle of July. x\mong the most 

 conspicuous were the lovely Primula nivalis. Pall., which 

 strongly resembles P. Parryi of Colorado ; Dracoceplialum gran- 

 diflorum, which grew in sheets of caerulean blue ; Polemonium 

 pulchellum ; G-entiana altaica ; Pedicularis verticillata, P. 

 foliosa, P. comosa ; Allium sibiricum, or senescens, the most 

 ornamental of its genus ; Linum caruleum ; Iris (igridia, Bunge ; 

 Pyrethrum pulchellum ; a lovely blue Gorydalis growing in web 

 places, which Mr. Baker cannot name, and which may be new ; 

 a beautiful Aquilegia, named A. glandulosa at Kew, but much 

 finer than that plant as we know it in our gardens ; several 

 pretty species of Astragalus, Lloydia serotina ; aud many well- 

 known Arctic and high Alpine plants, such as Papaver alpinum, 

 Draha ochroleuca, and ^axifraga oppositifolia, which were found 



