48 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL^ SOCIETY. 
Road River to Di-er-Kan, the first Tibetan village. Hence, on 
May 6, we turned sharp to the right, and up over the huge forested 
and grassy flank of Chago-ling, the pass over the great limestone 
range that had now for two days past been peering at us above the 
bare loess hills on our right. Here, of course, the climate is cool and 
alpine, and enormous virgin woodlands clothe the mountains — a strange 
sight, after many weeks of naked arid loess. This range is one of 
the enormous ripples in which the Kwun Liin dies away eastwards 
into China. It runs roughly parallel to the Min S'an further north, 
and between them intervenes a ridge of some 10,000 feet, cutting 
off the Blackwater from the Satanee River. From the heights of the 
pass at last the great snows came into sight, the Satanee range, on 
whose final vertebrae we stood, towering away to the left in magnificent 
peaks and wildernesses of white, while in front, over the intervening 
mountains, rose the overwhelming mass of Thundercrown, sheer above 
Siku, last outbreak of the Min S'an splendours which, to match those 
of the Satanee, unfolded themselves westward in ever-increasing 
magnitude far away into the wild heart of Tibet. 
All this gorgeous country, being alpine, is despised by the practical- 
minded Chinese, who abandon it wholly to the savagery of unkempt 
Border-tribes. We had trouble accordingly at Chago, left it hurriedly 
on May 8, and by May 13 were ensconced comfortably in a small 
temple at Satanee, in a friendly village under Chinese sway. From 
this, however, when we had just begun to get our teeth into the riches 
of the snowy range, now just opposite, we were driven by a general 
Jehad organized from Chago by the monks, under the conviction that 
our investigations were annoying the mountain spirits. The White 
Wolf was now raging in Kansu, and our position was critical. How- 
ever, we decided on the least of the many threatened evils, and made 
straight over the intervening range to Siku, on chance of finding the 
rumour false that declared the Wolf in full possession and the town 
sacked. 
On May 22 we entered the storm-tossed little city of Siku, sitting 
so snug beside the Blackwater, embosomed in groves of willow and 
Persimmon, with gaunt and sunburnt hills of loess all around, and 
behind, overhead, the colossal impending mass of Thundercrown and 
the huge ridge in which, after Thundercrown, the Min S'an dies away 
eastwards as the Satanee range dies away eastwards from Chagola. 
Reference to the map will show that we were now once more quite 
near Kiai Chow, having rejoined the Blackwater a little further 
north-west, and thus described a long and irregular narrow rectangle 
down through the last descending tip of Kansu. Berezowski, it will 
be remembered, had visited both the Siku and Satanee districts in 
1886, spending the winter zoologizing at Satanee, while at Siku they 
vividly remember him to this day as having stolen a moon of theirs 
that lived in a stone and was never seen after his departure. Even 
the Herbarium yield, however, of the Potanin Expeditions is still 
for the most part a rudis indigestaqite moles. These districts have 
