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82
EAST ASIA.
ROUTES EXTENT POPULATION.
Thanks to the fertile tract thus cutting the Gobi into two great sections, the
Chinese have been able easily to maintain their communications from the Nan-
shan to the Tian-shan with the western provinces of the empire. The natural
route always followed by the caravans and invading hosts starts from Lantchew-fu,
at the great western bend of the Hoang-ho, and, after crossing the mountains
skirting the Kuku-nor basin, descends through the Kiayu defile and the Great
Wall into the northern plains, and so on north-westwards to the Hami oasis. Here
the historic highway branches off on either side of the Eastern Tian-shan, one
98 C
Fig.
31. WEST END OF THK GBEAT WALL.
Scale 1 : 5,000,000.
120 Miles.
track penetrating into the Tarim basin, the other passing through Zungaria into
the Aralo-Caspian basin ; that is, into the Russian world and Europe.
It is thus evident how important to China must be this relatively fertile region
conquered two thousand years ago, which divides the desert zone into two parts,
and which is traversed by the great transverse -route from the Hoang-ho to the
Tian-shan. The whole country, although lying beyond the Great Wall and sepa-
rated by lofty ranges from the Hoang-ho basin, has accordingly been attached to
the province of Kansu. Even in the last century the districts of Hami and Pijan,
ou the southern slope of the Tian-shan, were included in this province as integral
parts of the inner empire. North-west of a parting ridge crossed by the Usu-ling
Pass (about 10,000 feet) a belt of inhabited lands, in some places scarcely 30 miles
59'