GOBELIN, the name of a family of dyers, who in all probability came originally from Reims, and who in the middle of the 15th century established themselves in the Faubourg Saint Marcel, Paris, on the banks of the Bièvre. The first head of the firm was named Jehan (d. 1476). He discovered a peculiar kind of scarlet dyestuff, and he expended so much money on his establishment that it was named by the common people la folie Gobelin. To the dye-works there was added in the 16th century a manufactory of tapestry (q.v.). So rapidly did the wealth of the family increase, that in the third or fourth generation some of them forsook their trade and purchased titles of nobility. More than one of their number held offices of state, among others Balthasar, who became successively treasurer general of artillery, treasurer extraordinary of war, councillor secretary of the king, chancellor of the exchequer, councillor of state and president of the chamber of accounts, and who in 1601 received from Henry IV. the lands and lordship of Briecomte-Robert. He died in 1603. The name of the Gobelins as dyers cannot be found later than the end of the 17th century. In 1662 the works in the Faubourg Saint Marcel, with the adjoining grounds, were purchased by Colbert on behalf of Louis XIV., and transformed into a general upholstery manufactory, in which designs both in tapestry and in all kinds of furniture were executed under the superintendence of the royal painter, Le Brun. On account of the pecuniary embarrassments of Louis XIV., the establishment was closed in 1694, but it was reopened in 1697 for the manufacture of tapestry, chiefly for royal use and for presentation. During the Revolution and the reign of Napoleon the manufacture was suspended, but it was revived by the Bourbons, and in 1826 the manufacture of carpets was added to that of tapestry. In 1871 the building was partly burned by the Communists. The manufacture is still carried on under the state.
See Lacordaire, Notice historique sur les manufactures impériales de tapisserie des Gobelin et de tapis de la Savonnerie, précédée du catalogue des tapisseries qui y sont exposés (Paris, 1853); Genspach, Répertoire détaillé des tapisseries exécutées aux Gobelins, 1662-1892 (Paris, 1893); Guiffrey, Histoire de la tapisserie en France (Paris, 1878-1885). The two last-named authors were directors of the manufactory.
GOBI (for which alternative Chinese names are Sha-mo, “sand desert,” and Han-hai, “dry sea”), a term which in its widest significance means the long stretch of desert country that extends from the foot of the Pamirs, in about 77° E., eastward to the Great Khingan Mountains, in 116°-118° E., on the border of Manchuria, and from the foothills of the Altai, the Sayan and the Yablonoi Mountains on the N. to the Astin-tagh or Altyn-tagh and the Nan-shan, the northernmost constituent ranges of the Kuen-lun Mountains, on the south. By conventional usage a relatively small area on the east side of the Great Khingan, between the upper waters of the Sungari and the upper waters of the Liao-ho, is also reckoned to belong to the Gobi. On the other hand, geographers and Asiatic explorers prefer to regard the W. extremity of the Gobi region (as defined above), namely, the basin of the Tarim in E. Turkestan, as forming a separate and independent desert, to which they have given the name of Takla-makan. The latter restriction governs the present article, which accordingly excludes the Takla-makan, leaving it for separate treatment. The desert of Gobi as a whole is only very imperfectly known, information being confined to the observations which individual travellers have made from their respective itineraries across the desert. Amongst the explorers to whom we owe such knowledge as we possess about the Gobi, the most important have been Marco Polo (1273-1275), Gerbillon (1688-1698), Ijsbrand Ides (1692-1694), Lange (1727-1728 and 1736), Fuss and Bunge (1830-1831), Fritsche (1868-1873), Pavlinov and Matusovski (1870), Ney Elias (1872-1873), N. M. Przhevalsky (1870-1872 and 1876-1877), Zosnovsky (1875), M. V. Pjevtsov (1878), G. N. Potanin (1877 and 1884-1886), Count Széchenyi and L. von Loczy (1879-1880), the brothers Grum-Grzhimailo (1889-1890), P. K. Kozlov (1893-1894 and 1899-1900), V. I. Roborovsky (1894), V. A. Obruchev (1894-1896), Futterer and Holderer (1896); C. E. Bonin (1896 and 1899), Sven Hedin (1897 and 1900-1901), K. Bogdanovich (1898), Ladyghin (1899-1900) and Katsnakov (1899-1900).
Geographically the Gobi (a Mongol word meaning “desert”) is the deeper part of the gigantic depression which fills the interior of the lower terrace of the vast Mongolian plateau, and measures over 1000 m. from S.W. to N.E. and 450 to 600 m. from N. to S., being widest in the west, along the line joining the Baghrash-kol and the Lop-nor (87°-89° E.). Owing to the immense area covered, and the piecemeal character of the information, no general description can be made applicable to the whole of the Gobi. It will be more convenient, therefore, to describe its principal distinctive sections seriatim, beginning in the west.
Ghashiun-Gobi and Kuruk-tagh.—The Yulduz valley or valley of the Khaïdyk-gol (83°-86° E., 43° N.) is enclosed by two prominent members of the Tian-shan system, namely the Chol-tagh and the Kuruk-tagh, running parallel and close to one another. As they proceed eastward they diverge, sweeping back on N. and S. respectively so as to leave room for the Baghrash-kol. These two ranges mark the northern and the southern edges respectively of a great swelling, which extends eastward for nearly twenty degrees of longitude. On its northern side the Chol-tagh descends steeply, and its foot is fringed by a string of deep depressions, ranging from Lukchun (425 ft. below the level of the sea) to Hami (2800 ft. above sea-level). To the south of the Kuruk-tagh lie the desert of Lop, the desert of Kum-tagh, and the valley of the Bulunzir-gol. To this great swelling, which arches up between the two border-ranges of the Chol-tagh and Kuruk-tagh, the Mongols give the name of Ghashiun-Gobi or Salt Desert. It is some 80 to 100 m. across from N. to S., and is traversed by a number of minor parallel ranges, ridges and chains of hills, and down its middle runs a broad stony valley, 25 to 50 m. wide, at an elevation of 3000 to 4500 ft. The Chol-tagh, which reaches an average altitude of 6000 ft., is absolutely sterile, and its northern foot rests upon a narrow belt of barren sand, which leads down to the depressions mentioned above.
The Kuruk-tagh is the greatly disintegrated, denuded and wasted relic of a mountain range which formerly was of incomparably greater magnitude. In the west, between Baghrash-kol and the Tarim, it consists of two, possibly of three, principal ranges, which, although broken in continuity, run generally parallel to one another, and embrace between them numerous minor chains of heights. These minor ranges, together with the principal ranges, divide the region into a series of long, narrow valleys, mostly parallel to one another and to the enclosing mountain chains, which descend like terraced steps, on the one side towards the depression of Lukchun and on the other towards the desert of Lop. In many cases these latitudinal valleys are barred transversely by ridges or spurs, generally elevations en masse of the bottom of the valley. Where such elevations exist, there is generally found, on the E. side of the transverse ridge, a cauldron-shaped depression, which some time or other has been the bottom of a former lake, but is now nearly a dry salt-basin. The surface configuration is in fact markedly similar to that which occurs in the inter-mont latitudinal valleys of the Kuen-lun. The hydrography of the Ghashiun-Gobi and the Kuruk-tagh is determined by these chequered arrangements of the latitudinal valleys. Most of the principal streams, instead of flowing straight down these valleys, cross them diagonally and only turn west after they have cut their way through one or more of the transverse barrier ranges.[1] To the highest range on the great swelling Grum-Grzhimailo gives the name of Tuge-tau, its altitude being 9000 ft. above the level of the sea and some 4000 ft. above the crown of the swelling itself. This range he considers to belong to the Chol-tagh system, whereas Sven Hedin would assign it to the Kuruk-tagh. This last, which is pretty certainly identical with the range of Khara-teken-ula (also known as the Kyzyl-sanghir, Sinir, and Singher Mountains), that overlooks the southern shore of the Baghrash-kol, though parted from it by the drift-sand desert of Ak-bel-kum (White Pass Sands), has at first a W.N.W. to E.S.E. strike, but it gradually curves round like a scimitar towards the E.N.E. and at the same time gradually decreases in elevation. In 91° E., while the principal range of the Kuruk-tagh system wheels to the E.N.E., four of its subsidiary ranges terminate, or rather die away somewhat suddenly, on the brink of a long narrow depression (in which Sven Hedin sees a N.E. bay of the former great Central Asian lake of Lop-nor), having over against them the écheloned terminals of similar subordinate ranges of the Pe-shan (Bey-san) system (see below). The Kuruk-tagh is throughout a relatively low, but almost completely barren range, being entirely destitute of animal life, save for hares, antelopes and wild camels, which frequent its few small, widely scattered oases. The vegetation, which is confined to these same relatively favoured spots, is of the scantiest and is mainly confined to bushes of saxaul (Anabasis Ammodendron), reeds (kamish), tamarisks, poplars, Kalidium and Ephedra.
Desert of Lop.—This section of the Gobi extends south-eastward from the foot of the Kuruk-tagh as far as the present terminal basin of the Tarim, namely Kara-koshun (Przhevalsky’s Lop-nor), and is an almost perfectly horizontal expanse, for, while the Baghrash-kol in the N. lies at an altitude of 2940 ft., the Kara-koshun, over 200 m. to the S., is only 300 ft. lower. The characteristic features of this almost dead level or but slightly undulating region are: (i.) broad, unbroken expanses of clay intermingled with sand, the clay (shor) being indurated and saliferous and often arranged in terraces; (ii.) hard, level, clay expanses, more or less thickly sprinkled with fine gravel (say), the clay being mostly of a yellow or yellow-grey colour; (iii.) benches, flattened ridges and tabular masses of consolidated clay (jardangs), arranged in distinctly defined laminae, three stories being sometimes superimposed one upon the other, and their vertical faces being abraded, and often undercut, by the wind, while the formations themselves are separated by parallel gullies or wind-furrows, 6 to 20 ft. deep, all sculptured in the direction of the prevailing wind, that is, from N.E. to S.W.; and (iv.) the absence of drift-sand and sand-dunes, except in the south, towards the outlying foothills of the Astin-tagh. Perhaps the most striking characteristic, after the jardangs or clay terraces, is the fact that the whole of this region is not only swept bare of sand by the terrific sandstorms (burans) of the spring months, the particles of sand with which the wind is laden acting like a sand-blast, but the actual substantive materials of the desert itself are abraded, filed, eroded and carried bodily away into the network of lakes in which the Tarim loses itself, or are even blown across the lower, constantly shifting watercourses of that river and deposited on or among the gigantic dunes which choke the eastern end of the desert of Takla-makan. Numerous indications, such as salt-stained depressions of a lacustrine appearance, traces of former lacustrine shore-lines, more or less parallel and concentric, the presence in places of vast quantities of fresh-water mollusc shells (species of Limnaea and Planorbis), the existence of belts of dead poplars, patches of dead tamarisks and extensive beds of withered reeds, all these always on top of the jardangs, never in the wind-etched furrows, together with a few scrubby poplars and Elaeagnus, still struggling hard not to die, the presence of ripple marks of aqueous origin on the leeward sides of the clay terraces and in other wind-sheltered situations, all testify to the former existence in this region of more or less extensive freshwater lakes, now of course completely desiccated. During the prevalence of the spring storms the atmosphere that overhangs the immediate surface of the desert is so heavily charged with dust as to be a veritable pall of desolation. Except for the wild camel which frequents the reed oases on the N. edge of the desert, animal life is even less abundant than in the Ghashiun-Gobi, and the same is true as regards the vegetation.
Desert of Kum-tagh.—This section lies E.S.E. of the desert of Lop, on the other side of the Kara-koshun and its more or less temporary continuations, and reaches north-eastwards as far as the vicinity of the town of Sa-chow and the lake of Kara-nor or Kala-chi. Its southern rim is marked by a labyrinth of hills, dotted in groups and irregular clusters, but evidently survivals of two parallel ranges which are now worn down as it were to mere fragments of their former skeletal structure. Between these and the Astin-tagh intervenes a broad latitudinal valley, seamed with watercourses which come down from the foothills of the Astin-tagh and beside which scrubby desert plants of the usual character maintain a precarious existence, water reaching them in some instances at intervals of years only. This part of the desert has a general slope N.W. towards the relative depression of the Kara-koshun. A noticeable feature of the Kum-tagh is the presence of large accumulations of drift-sand, especially along the foot of the crumbling desert ranges, where it rises into dunes sometimes as much as 250 ft. in height and climbs half-way up the flanks of ranges themselves. The prevailing winds in this region would appear to blow from the W. and N.W. during the summer, winter and autumn, though in spring, when they certainly are more violent, they no doubt come from the N.E., as in the desert of Lop. Anyway, the arrangement of the sand here “agrees perfectly with the law laid down by Potanin, that in the basins of Central Asia the sand is heaped up in greater mass on the south, all along the bordering mountain ranges where the floor of the depressions lies at the highest level.”[2] The country to the north of the desert ranges is thus summarily described by Sven Hedin:[3] “The first zone of drift-sand is succeeded by a region which exhibits proofs of wind-modelling on an extraordinarily energetic and well developed scale, the results corresponding to the jardangs and the wind-eroded gullies of the desert of Lop. Both sets of phenomena lie parallel to one another; from this we may infer that the winds which prevail in the two deserts are the same. Next comes, sharply demarcated from the zone just described, a more or less thin kamish steppe growing on level ground; and this in turn is followed by another very narrow belt of sand, immediately south of Achik-kuduk.... Finally in the extreme north we have the characteristic and sharply defined belt of kamish steppe, stretching from E.N.E. to W.S.W. and bounded on N. and S. by high, sharp-cut clay terraces.... At the points where we measured them the northern terrace was 113 ft. high and the southern 85¼ ft.... Both terraces belong to the same level, and would appear to correspond to the shore lines of a big bay of the last surviving remnant of the Central Asian Mediterranean. At the point where I crossed it the depression was 6 to 7 m. wide, and thus resembled a flat valley or immense river-bed.”