Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/78

 On the banks of the Tarim itself, as well as on its arms and tributaries, vegetation is somewhat more varied, though scanty in the extreme. First of all, in the narrow wooded belt we notice the poplar (Populus diversifolia) a crooked tree attaining a height of between twenty-five to thirty-five feet, with an almost invariably hollow trunk from one to three feet thick; the oleaster in small quantities; the Halimodendron, Asclepias, and two other kinds of bushes of the bean family, covering vast areas, whilst tall cane-brake and Typha obstruct the lakes and marshes on both banks of the Tarim, and as a rarity, wild pea and Astragalus, with two or three representatives of the genus Compositæ growing here and there on the damper ground. These complete the list of plants of the Tarim and Lob-nor. No meadows, no grass, not a vestige of a flower is here to be seen.

It would indeed be difficult to picture to oneself a more desolate landscape; the poplar woods, with their bare soil, covered only in autumn with fallen leaves parched and shrivelled with the dry heat, withered branches and prostrate trees encumbering the ground, cane-brake crackling under foot, and saline dust ready to envelope you