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0376 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 376 ページ(カラー画像)

New!引用情報

doi: 10.20676/00000233
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

this mid-continental basin of which the floor is below sea-
level is of necessity very hot. Horses, cows, sheep, and
camels die unless driven to the mountains. Only the hardy
donkey can live through many seasons. In 1894, when a
Russian expedition spent the year at Lukchun on the east
side of the basin, the mean temperature of June and August
was eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, and of July ninety-one,
and the absolute maximum one hundred and eighteen. The
year was not considered especially warm.
Such temperatures as those of Turfan render exertion
of every kind almost impossible in summer; but they make
the fruits of the region most luscious. At the beginning
of March, I found in the markets fresh melons, grapes,
apples, and pears, all of them most delicious and perfectly
preserved. The only exception was a kind of pear which
is never sold until it is rotted, as the flavor is then supposed
to be best. In summer the variety of fruits is of course
greater. The heat is so intense that melons are cut into
strips and dried in the sun. In most parts of the world
they would rot long before they became dry.
According to the Chinese, the summer is so hot that dur-
ing the day the birds all gather in the shade of the trees
beside the rivers. If one of them flies up, he is scorched
to a cinder, and falls sizzling into the water. Another
Chinese yarn affirms that the heat is so great that after
blowing on your rice to cool it, you must ply your chop-
sticks as fast as possible. If you do not, the rice will become
hot again and burn you.
In winter, as might be expected, Turfan is cold. The
mean temperature in January, 1894, was fifteen degrees,