or Tibet, an extensive country of central Asia, is bounded on the south by the Birman Em pire, Assam, Bootan, Sirinagur, and Hindostan: on the west by Great Buckharia; on the north by East ern and Western Tartary; and on the east by China. These boundaries, particularly on the north and south-east, have not been exactly ascertained. On the north, there appears to be provinces, to which our geographical knowledge does not yet reach. The extent of this country must, of course, be a little uncertain; hut its length from east to has been estimated at 1500 miles: its breadth from north to south at 500.
Thihet, the name by which this extensive terri tory is known to us, is a term not much used in the country itself. It seems indeed to be known to dif ferent people under different names. '[The Chinese, for example, call it Dshan. The Mongols or inha bitants of Tartary term it Baran-tala. The natives themselves call it Pile or Pud Koachim—the word Piie signifying north, and Koachim, snow; terms, as we shall see, admirably descriptive of the coun try. (Captain Turner's account of an Embassy to the Court of Thibet in the year 1783, p. 305.) The appellation Thibet, which in the east is pronounced Tibbit or Tibt, may probably signify, as has been conjectured, the kingdom of Boot or Budha, or the divine kingdom, in reference to its being the chief seat of a religion which prevails over the whole of central Asia. But on conjectures such as these, no great confidence can he placed.
An uncertainty, similar to that which attaches to its name and boundaries, prevails as to its divi sions: an uncertainty which the mixture of Thibe tian, Chinese, and Mongolian names render the more inveterate. It is said to contain eight pro vinces; but the most common division is Upper, Middle, and Lower Thibet; or Little Thihet, and Thibet Proper or Great Thibet.
Thibet forms the highest table-land in Asia, and is the nucleus from which the largest rivers of that continent take their rise, and flow towards every point of the compass. The country exhibits few high mountains in its interior, but its frontiers, particularly on the south and west, can boast of mountain chains, the peaks of some of which are the most elevated known in the world. Thibet is remarkable rather for its general elevation as an extensive plateau, varied, however, by considerable abrupt inequalities, than for any other circumstance. The valleys, of great extent, formed by the bleak and barren eminences in question, generally extend east and west. From the appearance of its surface, the country would seem nearly incapable of culture. Naked rocky hills, and plains as arid and gloomy as they are extensive, both without almost any visible vegetation, form the physical appearance of Thibet.
The mountains referred to as stretching along the southern and western frontiers of Thibet, are thought to correspond with the Imams or Ilemodus of the ancients; and the Himalaya range, so ably described by Mr. Baillie Fraser, form a part of them. For a minute account of this celebrated chain, we refer to our article IIINDOSTAN; but we may mention here that Dwawalagiri or the white mountain, the highest peak of the Himmaleh range, is estimated at 26,862 feet above the level of the sea. Thibet abounds with many similar ranges, but of incomparably inferior elevation. The most cele brated rivers in Asia take their rise in the elevated and mountainous country which we are describing, namely, the Indus, Ganges, Burhampooter, "the river of Brahma," belonging to Hindostan; the Ir rawady, the May-kian and Meinam, flowing through the Eastern Peninsula; and the Hoang-ho and the Yang-tsi-kiang, the two largest rivers in China.
Whether the streams that flow through Siberia and Western Tartary have their origin in the country under review, or in the contiguous plateau, named the Desert of Cobi, or where the boundary lies be tween the two territories, our geographical know ledge is too limited to enable us to ascertain. The lakes of this country, though little known, are re presented by geographers as numerous. The larg est is the Terkiri, about 70 miles long and 25 broad. We shall afterwards speak of a considerable one, -which produces tincal or crude borax. The lake of Yambro is represented as a large ditch or canal, 51 miles broad, surrounding an island about 100 miles in diameter. Within a range of 300 miles, toward the north and west of Terkiri, there are twenty three lakes which have no outlet, or which flow one into the other. We remark, among others, to the north-east of Thibet, the Hobo-nor, or Koho-nor, of great extent, in a very elevated situation, which has no outlet. These lakes are frozen in winter to a great depth. (Mate Brun, II. 14.) The climate cannot be supposed to be very genial. It is indeed the reverse, to an extent altogether unknown in any other country of a corresponding latitude. " At 28° 18' of north latitude, not far from the torrid zone, the wind," says Captain Tur ner, " was violently high in the munth of' Septem ber, and so sharp, that we dared not expose our faces to its fury : the want of caution on the pre ceding day had left on our faces sad memorials of its keen rudeness; and we now rode muffled up in such a manner that we could but just breathe." Such also is the intensity of frost in this quarter, that animals exposed in the open fields are not un frequently found dead, with their head absolutely split byits force. On the summits of the hills, springs are often seen arrested in their fall by frost, and converted into solid monuments of ice, firmly fixed till the heat of summer dissolve them. Some of them are of prodigious bulk and altitude, resem bling immense columns, contributing, with the uni versal nakedness of both hills and valleys, to im press on the mind of the traveller an indelible conviction of the bleakness of the region, and the severity of the climate. The inhabitants, at such a crisis, are not unfrequently forced to seek refuge in sheltered valleys and hollows, or in the cliffs of the rocks. It may also be stated, as a proof of the se verity of the cold, that the Thibetians kill their meat, chiefly mutton, in the beginning of winter, and expose it to the action of the air; owing to which process (by which all the juices are com pletely dried up, and the whole becomes one uni formly stiffened substance) it is preserved quite fresh till the end of the season. This extreme cold, however, is confined to the three middle months of winter, which lasts double that time, namely from October till March. The rainy season commences in June, and continues without interruption for three months; which period constitutes summer.