z 3,000 feet lower than Tibet, we travel through long, broad, open longitudinal valleys, with a very even bottom and finely disintegrated material, and bounded by comparatively low chains and crests at a considerable distance apart, and the land is sterile, dead, and desolate, and men are seldom seen. And yet the differences are very great. The greatest is the comparatively abundant precipitation in Tibet, where the mountains are clad in eternal snow, and where sweet-water springs bubble up on the strands of large lakes, where the cold is severe owing to the elevation, and grass and wild animals are more plentiful. But what, above all, reminds the traveller in Tibet of Persia is the position of the mountain ranges and their grouping. In both countries they are most closely crowded together in the west and straggle out towards the east. In western, south-western, and southern Persia a system convex to the south forms a faithful copy of the curve of the Himalayas ; the ranges which run through Kashan, Yezd, and Kerman correspond to the Trans-Himalaya, and the mountains of Elburz and Khorasan in the north are a repetition of the Kuen-lun. But in place of the high alpine country south of the Kuen-lun stretch south of the Khorasan mountains the great desert and the Kevir. And the resemblance extends a step farther to the east, where Tibet passes into the Indo-Chinese system, Persia into the mountains of Afghanistan and Baluchistan. The earth's surface has here disposed itself in regular folds, hanging in festoons to the south in the same manner as the mountain curves on the east coasts of Asia, so distinctly apparent in the curves of Japan, Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands.
Leaving Old Chupunun to the right, we ascend over hard and absolutely sterile ground towards the north-east, deserting the longitudinal valley we have followed for two days. The relief now becomes more pronounced and varied, new hills crop up before us, and in the gaps between them we often see more remote ridges and elevations. Pusa-i-verbend is the red summit on our right, and to the left stands a chain bearing the poetical name of Kuh-i-hesar-dere or the " hill of the thousand
IIIFカラー高解像度
