Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/205

Rh devoid of vegetation. Here and there a tuft of grass or a patch of grey lichen may be seen covering a foot or two of the surface, which in many parts is coated with an efflorescence of salt as white as the driven snow, and seamed in all parts by deep furrows caused by the violent and constant tempests. It is only in those spots where springs rise to the surface that verdure and an approach to grass-land may be seen. But even these oases bear the death-like stamp of the surrounding desert. The grass is all of one kind of Graminæa, half a foot high, as hard as wire, and so parched by the wind that it crackles like straw under foot and falls to powder.

The exhaustion consequent on the enormous elevation affects the strongest man. A short march, or even the ascent of a slight eminence, produces languor, giddiness, trembling of the hands and feet, and vomiting. Argols burn so badly owing to the want of oxygen in the air that it is difficult to light a fire, and water boils at sixty degrees Fahrenheit below boiling point at sea-level.

The climate, too, is in complete harmony with the sterility of these wilds. The winter is bitterly cold and tempestuous; the gales in spring are accompanied by hailstorms; the summer rains are also mingled with large hailstones; and it is in autumn alone that the weather becomes clear, still, and