Abstract
ACCORDING to the last news received from M. Prjevalsky, he reached, on September 12, tha boundary of Southern Tsaïdam, and thus entered the great highway which leads from China to Tibet. Detailed information as to his journey of last year from Kami to Sha-jeu, appears now in the Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society. Khami is at the extremity of the sandy steppe described as the Mouschoun Gobi; it is a desert, nearly quite deprived of vegetation. For fifty miles are seen only immense spaces of clay covered with gravel; the temperature at the beginning of June reached as high as 38° Cels., and the soil had sometimes a temperature of 68° Cels. Journeying must be done in the night. No large animals, except the antelope and the wild camel, which comes from the deserts of Lob-nor, were seen. M. Prjevalsky crossed this desert in a south-eastern direction for 232 miles, and reached the oasis of Sha-jeu, a very fertile one, being the best tract of Central Asia, after Kulja. A high ridge of mountains covered with snow, the Altyn-tagh of Lob-nor, here joins the Nian-shan of Koko-nor. Thus the question as to the junction of these two systems of mountains is solved definitely. M. Prjevalsky stayed for a month in Sha-jeu, seeking for guides to Tsaidatn, and finally he found in the mountains three Mongols who agreed to serve as guides, so that he could reach Tsaïdam, going first south-west to Lake Serten and thence to Lake Koko-nor.
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Geological Notes . Nature 21, 476–477 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021476a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021476a0