has been crossed at its unexplored elbow, where it turns south, and you have seen it in the great valley north of you, where for hundreds of miles it flows from west to east and is known to the Tibetans as the Tsang-po. Lhasa is in the valley — not far from the great river. Now to complete the investiture of Tibet, run a line northward from the west end of the last line, a little west of Nepal's north-west corner; make it about four hundred miles long to join the Kuen-Lun range, and you will thus enclose Tibet, lying to the east of this last line, with Kashmir and part of the north provinces of India to the west of it. Thus your straight lines are, respectively, 1200, 600, 1200, and 400 miles in length—about six hundred thousand square miles in area. Every foot of the boundary is in great mountains—on their tops or crossing impossible gorges of rivers that flow out of Tibet; none of those you have crossed flow inward, because Tibet is high—very high—and the rivers are seeking the seas. We have crossed, in drawing the first line, north and south, six hundred miles—the headwaters of the Hoang-ho, the Yang-tse-Kiang, the Mekong, the Salwin, and the Irrawaddy—these are all the great rivers of China, Siam, and Burmah. Going eastward we have crossed the Brahmaputra and the headwaters of the Ganges, or its northern tributaries. Going north we have crossed the waters of the Indus. These are all the great rivers of India. On the northern boundaries of Tibet we have crossed the headwaters of the Keria, the Khotan, the Karakash, and other smaller streams — all going to swell the Tarim or to be lost in the sands. And the Tarim flows inconclusively into an inland lake, Lob Nor, which has no visible connection with the sea.
And so it was also for running the boundary of Turkestan and Mongolia, except for the desert streams from Tibet, just mentioned, and the Kizil Zu near Kashgar,
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