(To the Editor of the Spectator.)
Sim—Notwithstanding the numerous hooks that have been published on Tibet from the time of Bogle and Manning, century back, down to the recent descriptions of the country by Rockhill, Bower, and others, the public generally have but a hazy idea of the wide Tibetan region, or of its great value to us and to all Europens whose lot is cast in the surrounding; lands dominated by the huge table-lan: th t towers above them. Tibet is the heart of Asin, rightly called the roof of the world; it forms the nucleus of thie great Asiatic continent, and from it may be said to depend the low-lying peripheral countries by which it is surrounded,—India, Burma, Sixm, and Gochin-C! the south; China proper on the east; and the Tarim Basin with East Turkestan on the north. The great rivers which water these countries have all their sources in the high plateav,—the Indus, the Ganges, and the Bramaputra, which flow through India and debouch into the Indian Ocean on the south; the Irrawaddy and thd Salween in Burma flowing into the Bay of Bengal the Lantsankiang, orMekong, which crosses Upper Siam and Cochin-China, and taking a south-west course, fows into the China Sea near Saigon; and finally, the Red River of Tongking, which rises in the Chinese province of Yunnan, itself a high table-land and peninsular extension of the 'Tibetan plateau. Coming round to China, we have the two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Huangho, which' mako their way to the Pacific, running right athwart the eighteen provinces" from enst to west,—tie one a solid stream of deep navigable some two thous.nd miles from its mouth, the other wide and shallow, and, owing to its eccentric behaviour and' irregular flow, commonly known as China's Sorrow." All these rivers are fed by the perennial snowsadorning the great mountain wall which fences in the plateau from the peripheral countries, and by the heavy monsoon rains derived from the masses of vapour which the south winds of sumer, crossing the Indian Ocean and the China Sea, pile up against the mountain barrier. "The mountains which bound the great plateau on the north, the Kunlun and the Altai ranges, have little rainfall, and here consequently the peripheral countries are little better than deserts, and their rivers only intermittent pools of water for the greater part of the year. Northern Tibet is itself a desert of lofty peaks and frozen plateaux 16,000 ft. and 17,000 ft. above the sea, interspersed with' desolate lakes of salt
Southern and Western Tibet, bordering grater, and is practically uninhabited. on India and China, have a lower elevation, the plate ranging generally from 10,000 ft. to 13,000 ft., while sufficient moisture here penetrater the boundary wall to enable a considerable population to dwell in comfort and to combine agriculture with the pastoral pursuits dear to all wealth as they possess. The climate in this region is cool and bracing in summer, while the winter cold is by no means severe; fresh water abounds, and the streams are so rapid that they are seldom hard frozen, The thermometer at'Lhassa, is said seldom to fall as low as zero Fahrenheit, and, if the nights are cold, the sunshine by day, even in the depth of winter, is warm and pleasant. Occasional blizzards occur, generally of three days' duration, when all who can, keep within doors; but calm weather is the normal condition, sharp, cold air tempered by almost continuous sunshine. My own small experience of it leads me to believe it to be one of the finest climates on the surface of the globe.
Bodyul, or the land of Bod, by- which name the country is known to the Tibetans, extends about 1,200 miles E. and W. (longitude 79° to 101° E.) and about 700 N. and (latitude 28° to 40° N.), Theboundary wall on the south, or Indian side, is the Himalaya range which runs E, and W. After reaching the country of the Kachins, to the north of Burma, this wall turns northwards and forms the boundary. between Tibet and China. This northern extension of the Himalayas is known to the Chinese as the Tuhsiiehshan, or Great Snow Mountains, a name of the same meaning as the Himalaya of the Indians. In appearance the Chinese range is much the same, the view of the Tabsiiehshan from Mount Omi in Szechuan (11,000 ft.) being analogous to that of the Himalaya from Darjeeling,—a grand wall of snowy peaks and glaciers towering into the sky to a height estimated at 22,000 ft. to 24,000 ft.. and dwarfing the high Szochuan ranges that lead up to it by contrast. Through this wall go passes which lead the traveller to the Tibetan Tending from Szechuan are. at Mnchionu Inteau beyond. The two principal passes
(8,000 ft.) in the west, which forms the high road from Chengtu, the provincial capital of Szechuan, to Bathang and Lhassa; and the Hstichpaotiny (13,000 ft.) which leads from the north of the province into the Tsaidam and Kokonor country on the north-west. I have traversed both these passes, and_on ench occasion found myself on a rolling, grassy plateau. the home of innumerable flocks of the big Tibetan sheep and of herds of the hardy yak. Agriculture is impossible'on the plateau itself, but in the deep ravines cut down, by the many streams, which form the shurees of the great rivers named above, barley, the main food of the p"ople, is grown in considerable quantity. While sojourning on the p'ateau—the tsao-ti, or Grass-lands, as the Chinese call it—I have been the guest of the Tibetan border tribes, and although the people are timid and suspicious, I found the men far more frank and manly in their behaviour than the Chinese, while the women, who do all the work and all the entertaining, are politeness itself, with a grace and freedom of mauner which forms a contrast to that of the downtrodden Chinese women, as pleasing as it is surprising. As a merchant and wool-buyer, my.presence amongst them did not raise the suspicions which a missionary or a purely scientific traveller cannot fail to give rise to. The Tib s on the Szechuan border are a remarkably handsome race, with the splendid physique and carriage of the mountaineer; they have little of the rvpulsive Mongol type in their features many of the younger men would pass for handsome Italians, while the young women are florid brunettes, prepossessing both in manners and appearance.
The Chinese derive no revenue from Tibet, avd their supremacy is all but nominal. The tribes are under their own, Tu-sxe or headmen, with a few Chinese Residents" posted along the chief highways of the country. A few small bands of ill-disciplined ese soldiers guard
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.