Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 329

1850.

Notices of the Sagalien River.

291

for about 100 miles, when it is turned northeast by a range called Tarkan Mts.and pursues a solitary course for 320 miles through the wilds of the Desert, losing its waters and name in Lake Hurun in lat. 49° N. and long. 116° E. It receives only a few tributaries near its head, and the only settlements along its banks are a few Mongolian hamlets; the road from Kurun eastward into Man- churia keeps along its valley.

Lake Húrun or Kúlunoccupies a depression about 210 miles in circuit in the Desert through which the Kerlon runs; it receives the waters of the river Ursun

鄂爾順

on its eastern

shore, a large stream which flows west and northwesterly from the western acclivities of the Sialkoi or Inner Hingan Mts., taking its rise under the name of Kalka R.

in a small lake in lat. 48° and long. 121°, and running about 140 miles into lake Pir or Puyur, a sheet of water nearly as large as Lake Húrun, lying about 65 miles south of it. The stream flowing from L. Húrun, is called the Arguin or Arguni, and forms the boundary between China and Russia for nearly 400 miles till joins the Shilka. Within this distance, it receives the waters of a score of rivers, of which the Kailar which runs in from the east just as it leaves the lake, the

喀

Keng, and the Tazinour, are the largest. There are many Russian settlements on the Arguni, one of which, Nertchinsk or Nipchú, is cele. brated for the treaty signed there in 1638. The Chinese government maintains a few troops at Húrunpir to oversee the frontier, but almost the whole of the Chinese territory drained by the rivers here men- tioned is a howling wilderness, over which the Kalkas and other Mon- gols pasture their herds, or wild beasts roam; on the Russian side the country is lower, the temperature higher, and the population incom- parably greater. All these streams, after leaving the mountains flow through a level country, but the fact that their sluggish waters are covered with ice nearly half the year, and on the same latitude as Warsaw, too, shows the inhospitable climate of these bleak wastes.

After the junction of the Shilka and Arguni rivers, the united stream takes its well known names, and rolls on to the Pacific a magnificent river, swelled as it approaches the ocean by the contributions of many affluents. At first the Sagalien runs nearly east, but after a course of about 100 miles in lat. 53°, it meets a long spur of the Outer Hing- an Mts., and gradually turns southeast, forcing its way through the defiles of the Outer and Inner Hingan ranges in a succession of rapids till it reaches the plain east of the mountains at its most southern point