Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/40

xxxii been published. But we are told (ii. 102) that the most southerly chain of these mountains, viz. that which rises directly from the plain of Sining-fu, is without forest, at least on its southern slopes, and its alpine zone almost without a flora,—expressions which seem to indicate the humid and fertile mountain region as isolated between two arid tracts. Our information as to the mountain regions still further south is very scanty indeed; but the brief account of Père Armand David's visit to the highlands on the south-east of the Koko-nor region, and nearly in the same meridian as that of which we have been speaking, describes a similar, but even moister climate. ' The atmosphere was so charged with moisture that it sufficed to precipitate this in rain, if several men joined in making a loud noise and firing off their guns.' The mountains were perpetually clothed in mist, which favoured the growth of conifers and rhododendrons; of the last no less than sixteen species were collected. Further south, again, on the same meridian, we have Mr. Cooper's account of his journey from Ching-tu-fu into Eastern Tibet; and here also we have a picture of heavy rains between July and September (see pp. 219, 367, 395). We are here approaching the Irawadi valley and the mountains that bound Bengal on the east, where the summer rain is so heavy and regular. So that these Kansuh Alps, with their heavy rains and abundant vegetation, seem to fall within the north-western limit of a vast area over which the heavy summer rains, which in India accompany what we call the south-west monsoon, are the rule, presenting so strong a contrast to the dry summers and wet winters of the sub-tropical zone of Europe.'

Another subject which seems to require notice here consists of those characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism to which allusions frequently occur in Prejevalsky's narrative,