have been the earliest companions of mankind--oxen, sheep, dogs, and
camels--are still to be met with in a state of original wildness. The
Hiongnu, in Eastern Asia, belong to the nations who earliest tamed and
trained wild camels as domestic animals. The compiler of the great
Chinese work, Si-yu-wen-kien-lo, (Historia Regionum occidentalium,
quæ Si-yu vocantur, visu et auditu cognitarum,) affirms that in the
middle of the 18th century wild camels, as well as wild horses and wild
asses, still wandered in East Turkestan. Hadji Chalfa, in his Turkish
Geography, written in the 17th century, speaks of the frequent chase
of the wild camel in the high plains of Kashgar, Turfan, and Khotan.
Schott translates, from a Chinese author, Ma-dschi, that wild camels
are to be found in the countries to the north of China and west of the
Hoang-ho, in Ho-si or Tangut. Cuvier alone (Règne Animal, T. i. p.
257), doubts the present existence of wild camels in the interior of
Asia. He believes they have merely “become wild;” because Calmucks, and
others having Buddhistic religious affinities with them, set camels
and other animals at liberty, in order “to acquire to themselves merit
for the other world.” According to Greek witnesses of the times of
Artemidorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus, the Ailanitic Gulf of the
Nabatheans was the home of the wild Arabian camel. (Ritter’s Asien,
Bd. viii. s. 670, 672, and 746.) The discovery of fossil camel bones
of the ancient world by Captain Cautley and Doctor Falconer, in
1834, in the sub-Himalaya range of the Sewalik hills, is peculiarly
deserving of notice. These bones were found with other ancient bones
of mastodons, of true elephants, of giraffes, and of a gigantic land
tortoise (Colossochelys), twelve feet in length and six feet in height.
(Humboldt, Cosmos, Engl. ed. vol. i. p. 268.) This camel of the
Ancient World has received the name of Camelus sivalensis, but does
not show any considerable difference from the still living Egyptian
and Bactrian camels with one and two humps. Forty camels have very
recently been introduced into Java, having been brought there from
Teneriffe. (Singapore Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1847, p.
206.) The first experiment has been made in Samarang. In like manner,
reindeer have only been introduced into Iceland from Norway in the
course of the last century. They were not found there when the island
was settled, notwithstanding the proximity to East Greenland, and the
existence of floating masses of ice. (Sartorius von Waltershausen
physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, S. 41.)
[10] p. 4.--“_Between the Altai and the Kuen-lün._”
The great highland, or, as it is commonly called, the mountain plateau
of Asia, which includes the lesser Bucharia, Songarei, Thibet,
Tangut, and the Mogul country of the Chalcas and Olotes, is situated
between the 36th and 48th degrees of latitude, and the meridians of
81° and 118° E. long. It is an erroneous view to represent this part
of the interior of Asia as a single undivided mountainous gibbosity,
continuous like the elevated plains of Quito and Mexico, and elevated
from seven to nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. That there
is not in this sense any undivided mountain plateau in the interior
of Asia, has already been shewn by me in my “Researches respecting
the Mountains of Northern India.” (Humboldt, Premier Mémoire sur les
Montagnes de l’Inde, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, T. iii.
1816, p. 303; Second Mémoire, T. xiv. 1820, p. 5-55.)
My views concerning the geographical range of plants, and the mean
degree of temperature requisite for certain kinds of cultivation, had
early led me to entertain considerable doubts as to the continuity of
a great Tartarian plateau between the Himalaya and the Altai. Writers
continued to characterise this plateau as it had been described by
Hippocrates (De Ære et Aquis, § xcvi. p. 74), as “the high and naked
plains of Scythia, which, without being crowned with mountains, rise
and extend to beneath the constellation of the Bear.” Klaproth has the
undeniable merit of having been the first to make us acquainted with
the true position, extent, and direction of two great and entirely
distinct chains of mountains--the Kuen-lün and the Thian-schan, in a
part of Asia which is better entitled to the name of “central” than
Kashmeer, Baltistan, and the Sacred Lakes of Thibet, (the Manasa and
the Ravanahrada). The importance of the Celestial Mountains, the
Thian-schan, had indeed been already surmised by Pallas, without
his being aware of their volcanic nature; but this highly-gifted
investigator of nature, hampered by the then prevailing hypothesis
of a dogmatic and fantastic geology, firmly believing in “chains of
mountains radiating from a centre,” saw in the Bogdo Oola (the Mons
Augustus, or culminating point of the Thian-schan) such a “central
node, from whence all the Asiatic mountain chains diverge in rays, and
which dominates over all the rest of the continent!”
The erroneous idea of a single vast elevated plain occupying the whole
of central Asia, the “Plateau de la Tartarie,” took its rise in France,
in the latter half of the 18th century. It was the result of historical
combinations, and of a not sufficiently attentive study of the writings
of the celebrated Venetian traveller, as well as of the naïve relations
of those diplomatic monks who, in the 13th and 14th centuries, (thanks
to the unity and extent of the Mogul empire at that time) were able to
traverse almost the whole of the interior of the continent, from the
ports of Syria and of the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Pacific on
the east coast of China. If a more exact acquaintance with the language
and ancient literature of India had dated farther back among us than
half a century, the hypothesis of this central plateau, occupying
the wide space between the Himalaya and the south of Siberia, would
no doubt have had adduced in its support an ancient and venerable
authority from that source. The poem of the Mahabharata appears, in the
geographical fragment Bhischmakanda, to describe “Meru” not so much
as a mountain as an enormous elevation of the land, which supplies
with water at once the sources of the Ganges, those of the Bhadrasoma
(Irtysh), and those of the forked Oxus. These physico-geographical
views were intermingled in Europe with ideas of other kinds, and with
mythical reveries relating to the origin of mankind. It was said that
the elevated regions from which the waters first retreated, (geologists
in general were long averse to the theory of elevation), must also
have received the first germs of civilisation. Hebraizing systems of
geology, and views connected with the Deluge and supported by local
traditions, favoured these assumptions. The intimate connection
between time and space, between the beginnings of social order and the
plastic character of the surface of the earth, lent to the supposed
“uninterrupted Plateau of Tartary” a peculiar importance, and an almost
moral interest. Acquisitions of positive knowledge, the late matured
fruit of scientific travels and direct measurements, as well as of
a fundamental study of Asiatic languages and literature especially
those of China, have gradually demonstrated the inaccuracies and
exaggerations of those wild hypotheses. The mountain plains (ὁροπέδια)
of Central Asia are no longer regarded as the cradle of civilization
and the primitive seat of all arts and sciences. The ancient nation of
Bailly’s Atlantis, happily described by d’Alembert as “having taught
us everything but their own name and existence,” has vanished. The
supposed inhabitants of the Oceanic Atlantis had already been treated,
in the time of Posidonius, in a no less derisive manner. (Strabo, lib.
ii. p. 102; and lib. xiii. p. 598, Casaub.)
A plateau of considerable but very unequal elevation, having the
names of Gobi, Scha-mo (sand desert), Scha-ho (sand river), and
Hanhai, runs in a SSW.-NNE. direction, with little interruption,
from Eastern Thibet towards the mountain knot of Kentei south of
Lake Baikal. This swelling of the ground is probably anterior to
the elevation of the mountain chains by which it is intersected; it
is situated, as already remarked, between 79° and 116° long. from
Paris, (81° and 118° E. from Greenwich). Measured at right angles to
its longitudinal axis, its breadth is, in the south between Ladak,
Gertop, and H’lassa, (the seat of the great Lama,) 720 geographical
miles; between Hami in the Celestial Mountains, and the great bend of
the Hoang-ho near the In-schan chain, hardly 480; and in the north,
between the Khanggai, where the great city of Karakhorum once stood,
and the chain of Khin-gan-Petscha, which runs north and south (in
the part of the Gobi traversed in travelling from Kiachta by Urga
to Pekin) 760 geographical miles. The whole extent of this swelling
ground, which must be carefully distinguished from the far more
elevated mountain range to the east, may be approximately estimated,
taking its inflections into account, at about three times the area of
France. The map of the mountain ranges and volcanoes of Central Asia
(Carte der Bergketten und Vulkane von Central-Asien), constructed
by me in 1839, but not published until 1843, shows in the clearest
manner the hypsometric relations between the mountain ranges and the
Gobi plateau. It was founded on the critical employment of all the
astronomical determinations accessible to me, and on a vast amount of
orographic description, in which Chinese literature is beyond measure
rich, examined at my request by Klaproth and Stanislas Julien. My map
marks the _mean_ direction and the height of the mountain chains,
and represents the leading features of the interior of the continent
of Asia, from 30° to 60° degrees of north latitude, and between
the meridians of Kherson and Pekin. It differs materially from any
previously published map.
The Chinese have enjoyed a threefold advantage towards the collection
of so great an amount of orographic data in the highlands of Asia, and
more especially in the regions (hitherto so little known in the west),
north and south of the Celestial mountains, between the In-schan, the
mountain lake Khuku-noor, and the banks of the Ili and the Tarim. The
three advantages I allude to are,--the military expeditions towards
the west, (under the dynasties of Han and Thang 122 years before our
era, and again in the ninth century when conquerors advanced as far as
Ferghana and to the borders of the Caspian), together with the more
peaceful conquests of Buddhistic pilgrims;--the religious interest
attaching to certain lofty mountain summits on account of sacrifices
to be periodically offered there;--and the early and general use of
the compass in giving the directions of mountains and of rivers. The
knowledge and use of the “South pointing” of the magnetic needle twelve
centuries before our era, has given to the orographic and hydrographic
descriptions of countries by the Chinese, a great superiority over
the descriptions of the same kind which Greek or Roman writers have
bequeathed to us, and which are besides extremely few. The acute and
sagacious Strabo, was alike imperfectly acquainted with the direction
of the Pyrenees, and with those of the Alps and of the Apennines.
(Compare Strabo, lib. ii. p. 71 and 128; lib. iii, p. 137; lib. iv. p.
199 and 202; lib. v. p. 211, Casaub.)
To the lowlands belong almost the whole of Northern Asia to the
north-west of the volcanic chain of the Thian-schan;--the Steppes to
the north of the Altai and of the Sayan chain;--the countries which
extend from the mountains of Bolor, or Bulyt-Tagh, (“cloud mountains”
in the Uigurian dialect) which follow a north and south direction,
and from the upper Oxus, (whose sources were found by the Buddhistic
pilgrims Hiuen-thsang and Song-yun in 518 and 629, by Marco Polo in
1277, and by Lieutenant Wood in 1838, in the Pamer Lake, Sir-i-kol,
Lake Victoria), towards the Caspian; and from Tenghir or the Balkhash
Lake through the Kirghis Steppe, towards the sea of Aral and the
southern extremity of the Ural mountains. As compared with high plains
of 6,000 to 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, it may well be
permitted to use the expression of “lowlands” for flats of little more
than 200 to 1200 feet of elevation. The lowest of the last two numbers
corresponds nearly to the altitude of the town of Mannheim, and the
highest to that of Geneva and Tubingen. If the word plateau, so often
misemployed in modern works on geography, is to have its use extended
to elevations which hardly present any sensible difference in climate
and vegetation, the indefiniteness of the expressions “highlands
and lowlands,” which are only relative terms, will deprive physical
geography of the means of expressing the idea of the connection
between elevation and climate, between the profile or relief of the
ground and the decrease of temperature. When I found myself in Chinese
Dzungarei, between the boundary of Siberia and Lake Dsaisang, at an
equal distance from the Icy Sea and from the mouth of the Ganges, I
might well consider myself in Central Asia. The barometer, however,
soon taught me that the plains through which the Upper Irtysh flows,
between Ustkamenogorsk and the Chinese Dzungarian Post, Chonimailachu,
(sheep-bleating,) are scarcely raised 850, or at the most 1170, feet
above the level of the sea. Pansner’s older barometric measurements
(which, however, were not published until after my expedition), are
confirmed by mine. Both refute the hypothesis of Chappe, relative to
the supposed high elevation of the banks of the Irtysh, in Southern
Siberia; an hypothesis based on estimations of river declivities. Even
further to the East, Lake Baikal is only 222 toises, or 1420 English
feet, above the level of the sea.
In order to connect the idea of the _relation_ of the terms _lowlands_
and _highlands_ and of the various gradations in the height of elevated
plains or undulating grounds, with actual examples ascertained by
measurement, I have subjoined a table, forming an ascending scale of
such districts in different parts of the Globe. What I have said above
respecting the mean height of those Asiatic plains, which I have termed
lowlands, may be compared with the following numbers:--
Toises. English feet.
Plateau of Auvergne 170 1087
„ of Bavaria 260 1663
„ of Castille 350 2239
„ of Mysore 460 2942
„ of Caraccas 480 3070
„ of Popayan 900 5756
„ round Lake Tzana (in Abyssinia) 950 6076
„ of the Orange River (in South Africa) 1000 6395
„ of Axum (in Abyssinia) 1100 7034
„ of Mexico 1170 7483
„ of Quito 1490 9528
„ of the Province de los Pastos 1600 10231
„ round Lake Titiaca 2010 12853
No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi (parts of which contain fine
pastures) has been so thoroughly explored in respect to the differences
of elevation as the zone, of nearly 600 geographical miles in breadth,
between the sources of the Selenga and the great Wall of China. A very
exact series of barometric levellings was executed under the auspices
of the Academy of St. Petersburgh by two distinguished Savans, the
astronomer George Fuss, and the botanist Bunge. In the year 1832 they
accompanied the mission of Greek monks to Pekin, to establish there one
of the magnetic stations recommended by me. The mean height of this
part of Gobi does not amount, as had been too hastily inferred from
the measurement of neighbouring summits by the Jesuits Gerbillon and
Verbiest to from 7500 to 8000 French (8000 to 8500 English) feet, but
only to little more than half that height, or barely 4000 French or
4264 English feet. Between Erghi, Durma, and Scharaburguna, the ground
is only 2400 French, or 2558 English, feet above the level of the sea,
or hardly 300 French (320 English) feet higher than the plateau of
Madrid. Erghi is situated midway, in lat. 45° 31′, long. 111° 26′ E.
from Greenwich. There is here a depression of more than 240 miles in
breadth, in a SW. and NE. direction. An ancient Mogul tradition marks
it as the bottom of a former inland sea. There are found in it reeds
and saline plants, mostly of the same kinds as those on the low shores
of the Caspian. In this central part of the desert there are small salt
lakes, from which salt is carried to China. According to a singular
opinion very prevalent among the Moguls, the ocean will one day return
and establish its empire anew in Gobi. One is reminded of the Chinese
tradition of the _bitter lake_, in the interior of Siberia, mentioned
by me in another work. (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, tom. ii. p. 141;
Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 232.) The valley or basin of Kashmeer, so
enthusiastically extolled by Bernier, and but too moderately praised
by Victor Jacquemont, has also given occasion to great hypsometric
exaggerations. By a careful barometrical measurement, Jacquemont found
the height of the Wulur Lake in the valley of Kashmeer, not far from
the chief city Sirinagur, 836 toises, or 5346 English feet. Uncertain
determinations by the boiling point of water gave Baron Carl von Hügel
a result of 910, and Lieutenant Cunningham only 790 toises. (Compare
my Asie Centrale, tom. iii. p. 310, with the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, vol. x. 1841, p. 114.) Kashmeer,--respecting
which, in Germany particularly, so much interest has been felt, but
the delightfulness of whose climate is considerably impaired by four
months of winter snow in the streets of Sirinagur (Carl von Hügel,
Kaschmir, Bd. ii. S. 196),--is not situated, as is often supposed,
upon the ridge of the Himalaya, but is a true cauldron-shaped valley
(Kesselthal, Caldera,) on the southern declivity of those mountains.
On the south-west, where the rampart-like elevation of the Pir Panjal
separates it from the Punjaub, the snow-covered summits are crowned,
according to Vigne, with formations of basalt and amygdaloid. The
latter formation has received from the natives the characteristic name
of “schischak deyu,” marked by the devil’s small-pox. (Vigne, Travels
in Kashmeer, 1842, vol. i. p. 237-293.) The beauty of its vegetation
has from the earliest times been very differently described, according
as the visitor came from the rich and luxuriant vegetation of India, or
from the northern regions of Turkestan, Samarcand, and Ferghana.
It is also only very recently that clearer views have been obtained
respecting the elevation of Thibet; the level of the plateau having
long been most uncritically confounded with the summits which rise
from it. Thibet occupies the interval between the two great chains of
the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün, forming the raised ground of the valley
between them. It is divided from east to west, both by the natives
and by Chinese geographers, into three portions. Upper Thibet, with
its capital city H’lassa, probably 1500 toises (9590 English feet)
above the level of the sea;--Middle Thibet, with the town of Leh or
Ladak (1563 toises, or 9995 English feet);--and Little Thibet, or
Baltistan, called the Thibet of Apricots, (Sari Boutan), in which
are situated Iskardo (985 toises, or 6300 English feet), Gilgit, and
south of Iskardo but on the left bank of the Indus, the plateau of
Deotsuh, measured by Vigne, and found to be 1873 toises, or 11,977
English feet. On examining all the notices that we possess respecting
the three Thibets, (and which will have received in the present year a
rich augmentation by the boundary expedition under the auspices of the
governor-general, Lord Dalhousie), we soon become convinced that the
region between the Himalaya and the Kuen-lün is no unbroken plain or
table land, but that it is intersected by mountain groups, undoubtedly
belonging to wholly distinct systems of elevation. There are, properly
speaking, very few plains; the most considerable are those between
Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (Shepherd’s Plain) the native country of
the Shawl-goat, and Schipke (1634 toises, 10,450 English feet);--those
round Ladak, which have an elevation of 2100 toises, or 13430 English
feet, and must not be confounded with the depression in which the
town is situated;--and lastly, the plateau of the Sacred Lakes Manasa
and Ravanahrada (probably 2345 toises), which was visited so early
as 1625 by Pater Antonio de Andrada. Other parts are entirely filled
with crowded mountainous elevations, “rising,” as a recent traveller
expresses it, “like the waves of a vast ocean.” Along the rivers,
the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Yaru-dzangbo-tschu which was formerly
regarded as identical with the Brahma-putra, points have been measured
which are only between 1050 and 1400 toises (6714 and 8952 English
feet) above the level of the sea; so also with respect to the Thibetian
villages of Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and Murung. (Humboldt, Asie Centrale,
T. iii. p. 281-325.) From many carefully collected measurements of
elevation I think I may conclude that the plateau of Thibet, between
73° and 85° E. long., does not reach a mean height of 1800 toises
(11510 English feet); this is hardly equal to the height of the fertile
plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 211 and 337 toises (1350 and 2154
English feet) less than the height of the plateau of Titicaca, and
the street pavement of the Upper Town of Potosi (2137 toises, 13,665
English feet).
That outside of the Thibetian highlands and of the Gobi, the boundaries
of which have been defined above, there are in Asia, between the
parallels of 37° and 48°, considerable depressions and even true
lowlands, where one boundless uninterrupted plateau was formerly
imagined to exist, is shewn by the cultivation of plants which cannot
thrive without a certain degree of heat. An attentive study of the
travels of Marco Polo, in which the cultivation of the vine and the
production of cotton in northern latitudes are spoken of, had long
called the attention of the acute Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese
work, entitled “Information respecting the recently-subdued Barbarians
(Sin-kiang-wai-tan-ki-lio),” it is said, “the country of Aksu, somewhat
to the south of the Celestial Mountains (the Thian-schan), near the
rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, pomegranates,
and numberless other excellent fruits; also cotton (Gossypium
religiosum), which covers the fields like yellow clouds. In the summer
the heat is exceedingly great, and in winter there is here, as at
Turfan, neither severe cold nor heavy snow.” The district round Khotan,
Kashgar, and Yarkand, still pays its tribute in home-grown cotton as it
did in the time of Marco Polo. (Il Milione di Marco Polo, pubbl. dal
Conte Baldelli, T. i. p. 32 and 87.) In the Oasis of Hami (Khamil),
above 200 miles east of Aksu, orange trees, pomegranates, and vines
whose fruit is of a superior quality, grow and flourish.