Note 402 — APPENDIX

The only true account of the general features of eastern Tibet is to be found in MM. Huc and Gabet’s travels. Their description agrees with Dr. Thomson’s account of western Tibet, and with my experience of the parts to the north of Sikkim, and the information I everywhere obtained. The so-called plains are the flat floors of the valleys, and the terraces on the margins of the rivers, which all flow between stupendous mountains. The term “maidan,” so often applied to Tibet by the natives, implies, not a plain like that of India, but simply an open, dry, treeless country, in contrast to the densely wooded wet regions of the snowy Himalaya, south of Tibet.