Oriental Experience Author:Richard Temple Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ( 23 ) CHAPTER II. THE CENTRAL PLATEAU OP ASIA. [Paper read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Southampton, September 188... more »2, as Presidential Address in the Section of Geography,,] Grand mountain system — Series of heights and depressions—Sources of great rivers— The lake regions — The home of warriors and conquering races — Mighty achievements of the Mongols — Their cavalry resources — Variety and value of natural products — Pastoral wealth — Strange phenomena of Nature — Enormous field awaiting research — Imperial jurisdiction. The subject chosen for this address is the Plateau of mid- Asia. This area, which is one of the most wonderful on the surface of the earth, contains nearly 3,000,000 of English square miles, and is equal to three-fourths of Europe. Its limits, its exterior configuration, its central and commanding situation in the Asiatic continent, will be clearly perceived from the subjoined map of Asia. As compared with some of the more favoured regions, it is singularly destitute of natural advantages. Though it has several deep depressions of surface, yet its general elevation is very considerable, and some of its large districts are the most elevated in the globe. It is walled in from the outer world, and excluded from the benign influences of the sea, by mountain chains. Its climate, then, is very severe on the whole, more distinguished for cold than for heat, but often displaying extremes of temperature high as well as low. It offers, from the character of its contour, extraordinary obstacles to communication by land or water. Though seldom inaccessible to courageous explorers, it is generally hard of access, and in several respects very inhospitable. In the progress of civilisation it is, with reference to its historic ...« less