Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/61

42 pasturage is excellent in every part, and it enjoys in summer an immunity from flies and mosquitoes, "an admirable, cool, and productive country, fit for gentlemen and cattle to inhabit," as the Torgutes described it to us. It forms an extensive depression continuing for some hundreds of versts from east to west. In all probability it was at some remote geological epoch the bed of an inland sea, as its alluvial clay soil tends to prove. Yulduz consists of two parts: Greater Yulduz occupying the more extensive westerly half of the whole depression, and Lesser Yulduz the smaller eastern part. Both of these have the same general features, the difference between them consisting only in their size. Lesser Yulduz, along the whole of which we passed, has the appearance of a steppe-plain extending lengthways for 135 versts, and widening in the centre to thirty versts.

Near the marginal mountains this plain is hillocky, and covered with luxuriant herbage. Here, too, chiefly in its eastern part grow low, stunted bushes of camel thorn, willow, and Potentilla; of trees there are none in Yulduz.

The elevation of Lesser Yulduz is from 7000 to 8000 feet above sea-level. The marginal ranges on the north and south are wild, rocky, and of