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THE OEDOS PLATEAU AND ALA-SHAN UPLANDS. 101
sounds, associated in the popular fancy with the massacres of Jenghiz Khan, who
is supposed to have died here, and to now lie buried in a silver and wooden coffin
somewhere under a yellow silk tent. At a respectful distance from the spot are
also interred the various members of his family, and a horse and sheep are said to
be still sacrificed every evening to the shades of the mighty conqueror.
Some 20 miles south of the Hoang-ho the ruins are visible of a city now
buried in the sands, whose ramparts were 5 miles long both ways, and about 50 feet
thick. At present most of the land beyond the river valley is a complete solitude,
and the Dungan rebels have even destroyed the encampments of the Ordos Mongols.
The very cattle have again run wild, losing the dull, heavy air acquired in the
domestic state, and assuming the habits of a free life. In two or three years the
change was complete, and at the approach of man these animals take to flight like
wild beasts. Camels and horses also roam in herds over the steppe, but all the
sheep have been devoured by the wolves. In 1871, when Prjevalsky explored
the country, its only visitors were a few traders, who came in search of the liquorice
plant, characteristic of this region.
Near the right bank of the Hoang-ho, where it flows northwards, a range of
hills gradually increasing in elevation attains towards its southern extremity the
proportion of true mountains. This range, known as the Arbuz-ola, is continued
on the other side of the river by the loftier chain of the Ala-shan, whose highest
summits, the Dzumbur and Bugutu, 10,000 and 11,000 feet respectively,
still fall
short of the snow-line. Both sides of the Ala-shan are fringed by a narrow strip
of verdure, watered by the rivulets flowing from its slopes. But its flora is very
poor, although the uplands are here and there clothed with forests of pines, spruce,
willows, and aspens, the resort of the deer, musk deer, and ibex.
Beyond the Yellow River the sands of the Ordos country are continued westwards
by a still more barren and desolate region. Its fierce sand-storms, combined
with the absence of water and herbage, render this one of the most inhospitable
sections of the Gobi. This Trans-Ordos steppe stretches uninterruptedly between
the southern spurs of the In-shan and the northern extremity of the Ala-shan as
far as the Az-sind River and the plains of the Mongolian Kansu. For a stretch of
some 300 miles the eye lights on nothing but sandy and gravelly wastes, or saline
clays overgrown with the hardy saksaul and thorny sulkhir (Agriophylhnn yobicuni),
the latter yielding -a small grain from which the Mongols make a sort of flour.
Here the lowest depression is occupied by the Jaratai-dabasu lake bed, which has a
circumference of 30 miles, and is everywhere incrusted by a layer of pure salt from
2 to 6 feet thick.
" The sparkling surface of the Jaratai-dabasu appears like water in
the distance, and resembles ice when you are near it. So deceptive is its appear-
ance that a flock of swans, apparently attracted by the sight of water in the desert,
descended before our very eyes almost to the surface of the false lake, but discover-
ing thfir mistake, rose again in the air with affrighted cry, and continued their
flight." Prjecakky.