Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/33

Rh allowance. This tea-drinking was a great nuisance to us, particularly when we were in a hurry to proceed on our journey; but nothing would induce either Mongol or Cossacks to stir till they had boiled their tea and refreshed themselves with long draughts of this beverage. Finding that the spirits of the party often depended on the consumption of tea, particularly of the whitened kind, I made up my mind to submit to it.

Our route in the valley of the Hoang-ho skirted the border range which extended as an uninterrupted wall as far as the river Haliutai. Here the mountains suddenly become much lower, in fact are no higher than hillocks, and retreat to one side of the abrupt cliff which continues to define the valley of the river. These hillocks serve as connecting links between the mountains on the border and the Sheiten-ula chain, which extends eastwards as far as the river Kunduling-gol. The latter is a low but rocky and treeless range, as far as we could see very deficient in water.

Almost on the meridian of the western termination of the Sheiten-ula rise the westernmost spurs of the Munni-ula. Between these two chains of mountains lies the broad valley of the Hoang-ho, thickly populated by Chinese. A belt of sand-drifts here prepares the traveller coming from the east for the frightful deserts of Ordos and Ala-shan.

At the Kunduling-gol we rejoined the track of our outward journey, so that from this point forward we had the benefit of a map and travelled no longer