IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 |
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Citation Information
PRSCHEVALSKIJ'S FIRST AND THIRD JOURNEYS.
453
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the other mountains on the high plateau. Its eastern and southern slopes are very steep, and abound in mica and black gneiss. The summit is flattened and does not reach the snow-line. For Tibet, our camp was however favourable, for we had access to forage, argol, and spring-water.»
Then follows the account of the return journey, and after that we read, »At Tschu-nagma we left our old route and struck into a new one almost parallel with it. We crossed over the western part of the mountains of Tsagan-obo and then struck across the plain that stretches to the Dung-bure Mountains.
We had spent the end of December on the southern half of the Tibetan high plateau. Generally the cold was severe: twenty-six times we had a temperature of — 20° C. and six times — 3o°, and our absolute minimum was — 33.5°. During the course of the month we had fourteen violent storms and nearly always a cloudy sky. We crossed over the Marco Polo Mountains by the pass of Angijr-daktschin, (4850 m.) situated immediately west of the Mountain of Balduin-Bordschi (5400 to 5 700 m.), which, like the massive of Sube, belongs to the Marco Polo system; this latter reaches a mean elevation of 4800 to 495o m. Our Mongol declared that this chain extends a very great deal farther towards the west.
After crossing over the plain that lies north of the Marco Polo range, we came to the small, but very steep chain of Gurbu-najdschi (alt. of pass, 4380 m.). On the east it is connected with the Gurbu-gundsuga range, and on the west is united with the Marco Polo range by the massive of Schara-guj. North of the Gurbu-najdschi flows the Najdschin-gol, which has its springs on the snow-covered mountain-mass of Umijke, belonging to the Marco Polo system. This river separates the Toraj chain from the Gurbu-najdschi and the Gurbu-gundsuga, and then turns north, and finally empties into a small salt lake in Tsajdam not far west of the salt lake in which the Bajan-gol terminates. The bed of the river is narrow and clayey. At the point where it turns north the Nandschin-gol is joined by the Schuga-gol.»
Finally they crossed over the Toraj range by the pass of Koko-tom (34 I o m.), and from there Prschevalskij returned home by way of the Koko-nor and Ala-schan.*
These brief extracts from Prschevalskij's First and Third Journeys will be sufficient to give us an idea of the general physical geography of the Tibetan highlands. As in the parts of Tibet which I visited and have described in the third and fourth volumes of this work, we find here again, in the regions east of those which I traversed, a great swelling and along it run several mountain-ranges parallel to one another and on the whole stretching from east to west. These start far in the interior of the internal drainage region of the Tibetan plateau, where they possess as a rule an insignificant relative altitude; and they stretch east and south-east towards the frontier of China proper, where they become more accentuated, their outlines being more deeply chiselled and more rugged, and their relative altitudes above the valleys between being greater. In the region explored by Prschevalskij they are in general flat and broad, with predominantly rounded forms, and are for the most
* Prschevalskij, Is Sajsana tscheres Hami v Tibet i na Verschovja Scholtoj Reki. — Reisen in Tibet und am oberen Lauf des Gelben Flusses (Jena, i 884).
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