plateau or elevated plain between Kwen-lun and Himalaya from Humboldt, he had nothing else to do than to say that Tibet is a very mountainous country, abounding in wide spread plains. There is nothing original in this and no order or system either, and how could it be in his time! The native descriptions of Tibet with which he had long been acquainted have not helped him to add any fresh know-
ledge of the country.
Hodgson has six different proofs of the probability of plains in Tibet. The true ox, deer and antelope types belong to the plains, therefore they live in Tibet and not in Himalaya. There is only one language spoken in Tibet, but many in Himalaya. The Tibetans have thdng and lûng for plain and valley, »whereas the Himalayan tongues have no word at all for a plain, no distinct one for a valley». But such conclusions are not sufficient for geographical purposes.
All native authorities attest the existence of ranges parallel to and north of the Himalaya, not only in Nari but also in U'tsang and Khåm. »The most remarkable of these parallel chains, and that which divides settled from nomadic, and north from south, Tibet, is the Nyénchhén thånglå, of which I spoke in my paper on the Hôrsôk and of which I am now enabled pretty confidently to assert that the Karakorum is merely the western prolongation, but tending gradually towards the Kwanleum to the westward. But these parallel ranges imply extensive level tracts between them ...., whilst the east and west direction of these ranges sustain Humboldt's conception of the direction of all the greater chains of Asie Centrale, or the Himalaya, Kwånleûm, Thiån and Altai, as also of that of the back-bone, of the whole Asiatic continent which he supposes to be a continuation westward of the second of these four chains.»
The new feature in this passage is that Hodgson is now enabled »pretty confidently to assert» the relations between Kara-korum, Nien-chen-tang-la and Kwenlun. How could he know that Kara-korum was the western prolongation of Nienchen-tang-la? So late as in 1910 the part of Kara-korum which is situated west of the Tibetan west-frontier was called eastern Kara-korum, instead of western, as if the Kara-korum was supposed to come to an end somewhere near the frontier. To make any assertion whether Kara-korum and Nien-chen-tang-la were a continuous system or not was absolutely impossible in 1856 and is not much easier now. But why does Hodgson not give his sources ? The Chinese have nothing concerning this difficult problem. The natives of Tibet could not tell, because they have not the faintest idea of the existence of a Kara- korum and an extremely vague idea of a Transhimalaya. The whole assertion of Hodgson is taken from Humboldt's map, Claalnes de Montagnes et Volcans de l'Asie Centrale, where, already on the edition of 1831 (Fragmens Asiatiques) the Karakorum Padichah is drawn as a continuation of the Dzang range, only with a short interruption N.E. of Manasarovar. Even the »tending» towards the Kwen-lun is taken from Humboldt's map. In this respect Ritter goes even further for he says of the Kara-korum pass : »Here obviously we
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