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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 81 Shawl-goat, and Schipke (163-± toises, 10,450 English feet);those round Ladak, which have an elevation of 2100 toises, or 13,-!30 English feet, and must not be confounded with the depression in which the town is situated;-and lastly, the plateau of the Sacred Lakes Manasa and Ravanahrada (probably 2345 toises), which was vi ited so early as 1625, by Pater Antonio de Andrada. Other parts are entirely filled with crowded, mountainous elevations, " rising" as a recent traveller expresses it, " like the waves of a va t ocean." Along the rivers, the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Y aru-dzangbo-tschu, which was formerly regarded as identical with the Brahma-putra, points have been measured which are only between 1050 and 1400 toises (6714 and 8952 English feet) above the level of the sea ; so also with respect to the Thibetian villages of Pangi, Kunawur, Kelu, and 1\Iurung. (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. iii. pp. 281-325.) From many carefully collected measurements of elevation I think I may conclude that the plateau of Thibet, between 73° and 85° E. long., does not reach a mean height of 1800 toises (11,510 English feet); this is hardly equal to the height of the fertile plain of Caxamarca in Peru, and is 211 and 337 toises (1350 and 2154 English feet) less than the height of the plateau of Titicaca, and the street pavement of the Upper Town of Potosi (2137 toises, 13,665 English feet). That outside of the Thibetian highlands and of the Gobi, the boundaries of which have been defined above, there are in Asia, between the parallels of 37° and 48°1 considerable depressions and even true lowlands, where one boundless uninterrupted plateau was formerly imagined to exist, is shown by the cultivation of plants which cannot thrive without a certain degree of heat. An attentive study of the travels of Marco Polo, in which the cultivation of the vine and the production of cotton in northern latitudes are spoken of, had long called the attention of the acute Klaproth to this point. In a Chinese work, entitled "Information respecting the recentlysubdued Barbarians (Sin-kiang-wai-tan-ki-lio )," it is said, " the country of Aksu, somewhat to the south of the Celestial Mountains (the Thian-schan), near the rivers which form the great Tarim-gol, produces grapes, pomegranates, and numberless other excellent fruits; also cotton (Gossypium religiosum), which covers the fields |