Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/39

Rh whatever worthy to be called an interpreter,—combined, as Mr. Elias has remarked, with a 'general inexperience of Chinese human nature.' The traveller himself is inclined to indulge somewhat strongly in contemptuous and inimical judgments of the people among whom he found himself; but this very contempt and hostility, with its sure reaction in ill-will from the other side, was certain to be aggravated by the difficulties of communication. The absence also, of a good interpreter renders it necessary to reject or doubt a good many of Col. Prejevalsky's interpretations of names.

Before closing these remarks it may be well to notice one or two points on which comment may be made more conveniently here than in the Notes appended to these two volumes.

One of the most novel and remarkable circumstances that come out in this narrative is the existence of an intensely moist mountain region in Kansu, to the north of the Hoang-ho, and on the immediate east of Koko-nor. This tract constitutes there what Prejevalsky calls the 'marginal range,' a feature everywhere characteristic of the plateau of Mongolia, i.e. a belt of mountain following and forming the rim of the plateau and the descent from it, but also rising considerably above the level of the plateau itself. In this range, after a short and easy ascent from the side of the table-land, at a distance of only twenty-seven miles from the arid desert of Ala-shan, the travellers found themselves on a fertile soil, abounding in water, where rich grass clothed the valleys, dense forests darkened the steep slopes of the mountains, and animal life appeared in great abundance and variety. The rains, during their stay of some weeks in these mountains, in June and July, were incessant, and the humidity in their tents excessive. The facts are not very clearly brought out in the narrative, and the scientific records of the journey have not yet