mountains in the world. Contiguous to the mountain
region is a narrow strip of clayey soil, that, when well
watered, is unusually fertile. Beyond this, stretching
out into the plains, is the limitless, almost fruitless, and
sometimes sandy steppe.
The three principal basins of the province are those
of lakes Balkhash, Ala-Kul, and Issik-Kul, formed by
the following mountains, namely : in the north, the
Tarbagatai, already alluded to ; the northern or
Sungarian Ala-Tau, between Lake Ala-Kul and the
River Ili ; and, south of that river, the Trans-Ili Ala-
Tau, which is, in fact, only the northern ridge of the
huge system known as the Thian Shan-Sthis compound
name signifying in Chinese the “ Celestial
Mountains,” called by the Turks TengH-dagh, and by
thé Huns, Kilian.
This mountain system, whether regard be had to
its area or its length, the height of its crests, the
abundance of its snows, or the massiveness of its
glaciers, is the grandest on the northern slope of the
Asiatic continent. It is not long ago that we had
only the most confusing and obscure information
regarding it. Mr. Semenoff, whom I mentioned as
having seen in Petersburg, was the first traveller, not
a Siberian, who explored the Thian Shan. This he
accomplished in 1856, but since that date a number of
Russian scientists, and a lady among them, have penetrated
as far as the Pamir from the north, whilst English
explorations, long ago commenced, have reached
the same point from the south. Thus, thanks to the
labours of savants of the two nations, this portion of
the geography of Central Asia is now fast emerging
from obscurity and conjecture.
Under the name Thian Shan we must understand
the vast mountain system that forms the watershed
of the rivers Syr-daria and Chu, of lakes Balkhash,
Ala-Kul, Ebi-Nor, and Ebi-gesun-Nor, on the one side,
and, on the other, the Upper Amu, Lake Lob-Nor,
and the River Tarim Gol. Its entire length is about
1,660 miles, and its highest peaks everywhere rise far
above the snow-line. The average height of these
dominant peaks varies from 16,000 to x 8,000 feet,
and some of them even exceed 21,000. The entire
mass is estimated by Réel us as 25 times larger than
the Swiss Alps, and as forming a protuberance upon
the earth’s surface considerably larger than all the
mountains of Europe put together. Reckoning their
average width at 250 miles only, the total superficies
of this orographic system would cover 400,000 square
miles, or as much country as the whole of France and
the Iberian peninsula.
The Thian Shan range begins in Mongolia, somewhat
to the east of the Chinese towns Barkul and
Hami, in a simple ridge of rocks rising up from the
bed of a dry sea, the Han-ha'i of the Chinese ; but to
this ridge, which advances west-south-west, is added a
second, then a third, fourth, and more ridges united by
intervening plateaus. The mountains continue to rise,
enlarge their base, and finish by occupying from
north to south a space of about eight degrees of latitude.
The peculiarity of the range is that the system
on the east extends at first almost along an even
parallel, whilst as it advances westwards it opens out
fan-like, and forms many groups. Between Barkul and
Hami the intervals between the several ranges scarcely
exceed 46 miles— that is, from the foot of one slope to
the foot of the one opposite— but to pass north from
Kashgar to the Ili valley, a distance of 250 miles only,