Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1894 — Central Asian Deserts. [ARTICLE]

Central Asian Deserts.

Mr. W. Woodville Rockhill describes in an entertaining style, in the Century, his attempt to cross Tibet. His picture of a portion of the country he traversed is not alluring. Life in Central Asian deserts is rough indeed, he says. Nature is without attraction of any kind; it is bleak and repelling; never a tree is seen, and scarcely a flower, except for a month or two in the year, Probably the Artie regions alone offer a more meagre flora. One sees only coarse grass, or bare, gravel-strewn ground of a reddish tinge. In the most favored valleys, and near some brackish lakelet, are occasionally seen bunches of long black-haired yaks, antelopes, or wild asses. A stray hare or wolf runs across the trail; a sheldrake or eagle flies slowly off at one’s approach. Were it not for the wild yaks, travel across this great plateau would be impossible, for dry yak-dung is the only fuel to be found. Should a murrain destroy the yaks, as recently it destroyed the lyre-horned antelope, traveling except along two frequented trails, would become unfeasible. Violent winds sweep the country daily, carrying with them dense clouds of alkaline dust, which parch and crack the skin and blind the eyes. When it is not blowing, it is snowing, hailing or raining. Bogs, marshes, and sandy wastes, cut at short distances by low ranges of mountains rarely rising above the line of perpetual snow (though, be it remembered, the lowest valleys are at a greater elevation above the sea than Mont Blanc), are the characteristics of the bleak country which we had to cross before the inhabited region of Tibet could be reached.