emendous boss called Tibet! Against its
heights the water vapour of the monsoon is cooled and condensed, so that
it falls in the form of rain and feeds the great rivers. Were the
country flat like northern India or Eastern Turkestan, immense tracts of
the interior of Asia would be complete desert, as in the interior of
Arabia; but as it is, the water is collected in the mountains and runs
off in all directions. Along the rivers the population is densest;
around them spring up cities and states, and from them canals branch off
to water fields and gardens.

You know, of course, that Asia is the largest division of land in the
world, and that Europe is little more than a peninsula jutting out
westwards from the trunk of Asia. Indeed, Asia is not much smaller than
Europe, Africa, and Australia put together. Of the 1550 millions of men
who inhabit the world, 830 millions, or more than half, live in Asia.
If, now, you take out your atlas and compare southern Europe and
southern Asia, you will find some very curious similarities. From both
these continents three large peninsulas point southwards. The Iberian
Peninsula, consisting of Spain and Portugal, corresponds to the Arabian
Peninsula, both being quadrangular and massive. Italy corresponds to the
Indian Peninsula, both having large islands near their extremities,
Sicily and Ceylon. The Balkan Peninsula corresponds to Further India
(the Malay Peninsula), both having irregular, deeply indented coasts
with a world of islands to the south-east, the Archipelago and the Sunda
Islands.

Tibet may be likened to a fortress surrounded by mighty ramparts. To the
south the ramparts are double, the Himalayas and the Trans-Himalaya, and
between the two is a moat partly filled with water--the Upper Indus and
the Upper Brahmaputra. And Tibet is really a fortress and a defence in
the rear of China. It is easily conceivable that a country surrounded by
such huge mountain ranges must be very difficult of access, and the
number of Europeans who have crossed Tibet is very small.

The inaccessible position of the country has also had an influence on
the people. Isolated and without communication with their neighbours,
the people have taken their own course and have developed in a peculiar
manner within their own boundaries. The northern third of the country is
uninhabited. I once travelled for three months, and on another occasion
for eighty-one days, without seeing a single human being. The