REPORT OF WORK IN 1914 IN KANSU AND TIBET. 49 
proved very fertile of interesting and beautiful plants, many of which 
are probably new to Herbaria, and yet more of them to cultivation. 
Siku, Shi-ho, and Wen Hsien were the only three towns of south 
Kansu left untouched and unvisited by the White Wolf. All the 
early summer Siku sat in utter isolation, cut off from all intercourse 
with the ravaged outside world, and sufficiently occupied on its own 
account with repelling invasions from wild Tibetans, who seized 
the chance of the general anarchy to come up against it from the 
mountains a few miles west, which, though (like all this Border) called 
" China " and " Szechwan " on maps, are in reality pure Tibet, owing 
allegiance only to uncontrolled Tibetan princelings, or to the august 
remoteness of Lhasa. In the intervals of repelling these alarms then, 
we were able to spend a happy six weeks exploring the fastnesses of 
Thundercrown and the great Ridge. Thundercrown runs up to some 
15,000 feet, and the Ridge is little more than a thousand feet lower. 
Though the conditions are alpine here, and every cloudless day for 
weeks in succession breeds a thunderstorm in the afternoon (hence 
the name Lei-Go-S'an — Thundercrown), yet the high alps feel the 
influence of the loess barrens far below, and the Ridge is dry for its 
altitude — much drier than corresponding elevations in the Satanee 
range to the south, or the main Min S'an to the north-west, towering 
as they do over cool woodlands and quite uncultivated alpine valleys* 
On the Siku ridge woodland and luxuriance are only found in the huge 
ravines that disembowel the flanks of the mountain, and finally 
debouch all together in the wide shingle-flat of dead rivers that sweeps 
down to Siku, where the lost waters of the range all come bubbling 
up again in springs like diamonds, amid the dappled shade of willow 
and poplar. 
On July 6 we left Siku, rode east some 20 miles down the Black- 
water, and then struck straight away north, up through the gorges 
of the South River (the Nan Ho), which here joins the Hei Shui Jang, 
cutting itself a way down through the last fading battlements of the 
Min S'an Ridge overhead. 
On July 10 we reached Minchow, on the northern side of the 
Min S'an barrier, in a country now quite changed — of vast and rolling 
green dish-covery grass downs, with a curious feeling of being in a 
saucer on the roof of the world. Whereas Siku, home of fig and palm 
and pomegranate and Persimmon, sits sunning itself at 4,500, Minchow 
stands 2,000 feet higher, in a cold, damper, and less kindly climate, 
where palm and pomegranate are strangers. So now we moved 
westwards, along the Tao River, up to the dilapidated little Tibetan 
city of J6-ni, where for some time we fixed, exploring the foothills of 
the main Min S'an mass, which lies across the river, some 60 miles 
south, approachable only by long, open, wooded valleys, river-channels 
from the endless undulatory downs of lush hay above on either hand. 
Here the moist, chill summer is much the same as our own, but the 
winter, of course, is of a far more adamantine hardness. Loess still 
lingers on either side of the Tao, but is no longer in evidence in the 
V©L 4 XLII a e 
