Page 197 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

196 THIRD BOOK OF
and Asiatic Russia; to which may be added the Islands of Japan. Its length om the Dardanelles to the eastern shores of Tartary, is about 6000 miles; its breadth, om the south of Malacca, to Cape Severo, is 5400 miles. It is said to contain 16 mil­ lions of square miles, with a population of 446 mil­ lions.
2. The greater portion of this vast continent is situated in the north temperate zone; that in the torrid zone being only one-seventh, and that in the igid, one-seventeenth of the entire. Central Asia rises to a considerable height above the sea, and rms a plateau, or table-land, from ur to ten thou­ sand et in elevation, which gradually descends to a level with the low-lands, by which this elevated mass is surrounded. Upon the eastern or highest part of this plateau, are placed the lofty Himalaya mount­ ains, which are the highest in the world; nature, as it were, proportioning the superstructure to the undation on which it was to be erected. Taurus and Caucasus mark the western limits of this plateau; the I imalaya range and its branches, the southern; while the mountain-ranges of Western China, and the Alpine region of Da-uria, mark its limits on the other sides.
3. All the great rivers of Asia have their sources in the highlands of this middle region. 1e Obi, Yenisei, and Lena, with their tributaries, discharge their torrents, under seas of ice, into the Frozen Ocean. The two great rivers of China, the Iwang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang, the espective courses of which are 2000 and 2900 miles, rise in the mountain region of Eastern Asia. The high tides of the Paci c Ocean ascend these rivers several hundred miles,