sands. The seeds are first roasted over a slow fire, then pounded in a mortar, when they produce a very palatable flour which is boiled in tea. We tasted the sulhir flour in Ala-shan, and took a supply of it with us for the return journey. The sulhir also serves as excellent food for the domestic animals: horses, camels, and sheep are all very fond of it. This plant also grows in Ordos and the central Gobi on the bare sand, and we found it in Tsaidam. The other kinds of plants in Ala-shan are mostly the same as those we had seen in Ordos. On the clay the budarhana, the karmyk often forming hillocky mounds, the prickly convolvulus (Convolvulus tragacanthoides),[1] the field wormwood, and an occasional acacia are most common; among the grasses Inula amophila, Sophora flavescens, Convolvulus Ammani, Peganum sp., Astragalus sp., and others are met with. But the scanty, crooked, and stunted vegetation of the desert generally leaves an unfavourable impression. There is no energy in the life of this region, the stamp of apathy and decay is upon it; everything seems to grow unwillingly as if under compulsion, receiving only sufficient nourishment from the poor soil to prevent it from withering altogether.
The poverty of Ala-shan in flora is equalled by that of its fauna. None of the larger mammals except the kara-sulta inhabit the desert; wolves, foxes, hares, and hedgehogs (Erinaceus auritus?) are
- ↑ This low and very prickly shrub, which generally grows in clumps, is called by the Mongols, Dzara, i.e. hedgehog.
