Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/46

Rh time there has been a gradual desiccation, and a recent traveller, a native of those regions, thus describes the tract:—"Lob is a succession of lakes along the Tarim river. Each lake gives off five or six streams, which spread over the plain and reunite lower down to form the next lake, and so on for a journey of thirty days by the road. Beyond this is the great desert, of which nobody knows anything."

Humboldt in his "Asie Centrale" makes the following remarks:—

"It is one of the chief geographical features of the country that to the east of the great river of Khoten (Khoten-daria or Youroung-Kach-gol), which, after a course of three hundred miles from south to north, flows into the water system of the Tarim and of Lake Lob, all the streams of the two slopes of the Kuen-lun are lost in the small lakes of the steppes.

"In this central region, between the 80° and 90° longitude, the upheaval of the Gobi makes itself felt in the course of the streams, an upheaval which causes an entirely independent direction of profile (accident du relief) to that of the sand-ripples which cover it, far more ancient than these, and probably connected with the first appearance of the continent above the waters.

"The intersection offered by the Gobi, the Kuen-lun, and the Tian-Shan, must not therefore be confounded with the interlacement of