Abstract
THE following news was received a few days ago at St. Petersburg from Colonel Roborovski, the present chief of the late M. Prjevalsky's projected expedition. They crossed the Tian-Shan by the Barskaun and Bedel Passes, and reached the Taushkandaria. Then they crossed the Kara-teke chain, and when they were on the banks of the Yarkend river, they found out that the Kashgar-daria no longer reaches the Yarkend-daria, but is lost in the irrigation canals of Maral-bash. They followed the Yarkend river, which rolls a mass of muddy water between quite flat banks, covered for some 15 to 30 miles on both sides of the river, by thickets of Populus euphratica, Populus prunosa, tamarisks, Halostachus shrubs, and rushes. Sand deserts spread on both sides,—towards the west to Kashgar, and eastwards to Lob-nor. Many ruins of old cities are met with in the deserts which are never visited by the natives. In the thickets of shrubs which fringe them there are numbers of tigers and wild boars, while amidst the barkhans of the deserts the wild camels are freely grazing. From Yarkend, the expedition went south, towards the hilly tracts, where it stayed for a month, and then it moved towards Kotan, whence Colonel Roborovski wrote on October 7. He proposed to winter at Niya, and to search for a pass to Tibet across the border-ridge to which Prjevalsky gave the name of “Russian Ridge.” If they succeed they will spend next summer in Tibet.
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Geographical Notes. Nature 41, 234 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/041234a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/041234a0