the nomad's herds the more
sterile patches between.[376] Every line of least resistance--climatic,
industrial, commercial--sees the Chinese widening this transitional
zone. He sprinkles his crops over the "Land of Grass," invades the trade
of the caravan towns, sets up his fishing station on the great northern
bend of the Hoangho in the Ordos country, three hundred miles beyond the
Wall, to exploit the fishing neglected by the Mongols.[377] The
well-watered regions of the Nan-Shan ranges has enabled him to drive a
long, narrow ethnic wedge, represented by the westward projection of
Kansu Province between Mongolia and Tibet, into the heart of the Central
Plateau. [See map page 103.] Here the nomad Si Fan tribes dwell side by
side with Chinese farmers,[378] who themselves show a strong infusion of
the Mongolian and Tibetan blood to the north and south, and whose
language is a medley of all three tongues.[379]

[Sidenote: Boundary zones of mountain Tibet.]

In easternmost Tibet, in the elevated province of Minjak (2,600 meters
or 8,500 feet), M. Hue found in 1846 a great number of Chinese from the
neighboring Sze-Chuan and Yun-nan districts keeping shops and following
the primary trades and agriculture. The language of the Tibetan natives
showed the effect of foreign intercourse; it was not the pure speech of
Lhassa, but was closely assimilated to the idiom of the neighboring Si
Fan speech of Sze-Chuan and contained many Chinese expressions. He found
also a modification of manners, customs, and costumes in this peripheral
Tibet; the natives showed more of the polish, cunning, and covetousness
of the Chinese, less of the rudeness, frankness, and strong religious
feeling characteristic of the western plateau man.[380] Just across the
political boundary in Chinese territory, the border zone of assimilation
shows predominance of the Chinese element with a strong Tibetan
admixture both in race and civilization.[381] Here Tibetan traders with
their yak caravans are met on the roads or encamped in their tents by
the hundred about the frontier towns, whither they have brought the
wool, sheep, horses, hides and medicinal roots of the rough highland
across that "wild borderland which is neither Chinese nor Tibetan." The
Chinese population consists of hardy mountaineers, who eat millet and
maize instead of rice. The prevailing architecture is Tibetan and the
priests on the highways are the red and yellow lamas from the Buddhist
mona