Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/420

404 farther shore of the Kuku-Nor. It was however necessary, first, to go to Peking and obtain a new outfit. A new pass was granted by the Chinese Government, extending to the Kuku-Nor and the borders of Thibet, and, with two fresh Cossack guardsmen, Prejevalski started back by the same route by which he had come from Ala-Shan to Kalgan. The party had the good fortune to attach itself to a Tangut caravan, which was going to the monastery of Chobsen, within a short distance of the Kuku-Nor, and would be to it as the best of guides, and also a defense against the Dungans, who were making parts of the country very uncomfortable. Having crossed the wilderness of Ala-Shan, to the border ranges of Shan-Su, they came upon a mountain-region, where the high elevation of the land, frequently rising above the snow-line, gave an abrupt and remarkable change to the character of the landscape. Fields and forests were laid out before the explorers, and the flora and fauna offered so many attractions to them that they spent the summer there. These mountains, which the Chinese call Nan-Shan or Sue-Shan, consist of three parallel ranges, and constitute a wild Alpine region, in the forests of which the Rheum palmatum, or rhubarb, which was for the first time in modern history seen in its native region, is the characteristic plant, while the belt between twelve and thirteen thousand feet of altitude abounds in rhododendrons. The mountains rise to the height of fourteen thousand feet, but there are no woods on their southern slopes. The Dungans pass for their most savage inhabitants, but they were not bold enough, with all the advantages of numbers on their side to attack our four travelers. All dangers were avoided by watchful care; and at last Prejevalski, getting a view of the Kuku-Nor, was able to say, as he has written in his account of the journey: "The dream of my life was fulfilled; the long-sought end was reached. What I had just before only dreamed of, had now become reality. It is true that this result had been bought only at the cost of many hard trials, but now all the sufferings we had endured were forgotten, and, full of joy, my companions and I stood on the shores of the great lake, and enjoyed the sight of its marvelously deep-blue waters." On the 12th of October, 1872, he pitched his tent on the shore of the lake, ten thousand five hundred feet above the sea, being the first European who had visited it, except the Jesuit Father Huc. Thibet lay before him as a new object of research, and he hoped to pass over Thibetan land to the upper waters of the Blue River, or Yang-tse-Kiang. He started on the 18th of November, and penetrated into that land along the lofty pass, till he was only about five hundred miles from Lassa, the residence of the Dalai Lama. But, again, the want of money compelled him to turn back. He retired to Zaidam, on the Kuku-Nor, where he remained till spring. In May, 1873, he was again in the Desert of Ala-Shan, which he succeeded in crossing without a guide, and reached the city of Dyu-Yuan-in after a hazardous march of fifteen days from