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THE GOBI DESERT. 97
has again become an arid waste. But no permanent stream has been developed in
the whole region, some 480,000 square miles in extent, stretching from the Kemlen
southwards to the Hoang-ho, between the Khingan range and Mongolian Kansu
east and west. The rapid evaporation on the Gobi plateaux is due to the violence
of the winter gales and the high temperature in summer. For the Gobi is at once
Siberian and Indian in its extremes of temperature, and these extremes at times
Fig. 39. VIBW is THF Gout.
succeed each other within the space of a few hours. In the South-eastern Mongo-
lian highlands Prjevalsky recorded on March 16th, 1872, a temperature of
68 Fahr. in the shade, followed during the night by 18 below freezing point.
The intense cold of the Mongolian winters, aggravated by the terrible north-
west winds, oxpliiins the errors of the old geographers, who gave the Gobi plateau
;m altitude of more than 8,000 feet above the sea. This has boon reduced by Ney
Elias and other recent explorers to a mean elevation of about 4,000 feet, rising in