To the outside it presents a heavy buttressed wall, with little of either grandeur or grace.
On the south the plateau is buttressed by the Taurus range, which stretches in a broken irregular line from the Aegean to the Persian frontier.
In its lowest portions just behind the front ranges are the natural "parks" - great plateaus basined by superb enclosing ranges; and to the west of these, and between them, and covering the remainder of the state east of the plateau region, is an entanglement of mountains, tier above tier, running from north to south, buttressed laterally with splendid spurs, dominated by scores of magnificent peaks, cut by river valleys, and divided by mesas and plateaus.
Thus the Himalaya represents the southern face of the great central upheaval - the plateau of Tibet - the northern face of which is buttressed by the Kuen Lun.
Such foresight had its reward, the more because it was buttressed during the debates of the Convention by the same readiness in debate, the same clear recognition of essentials, the same natural disposition towards compromise on details, and the same quickness in producing verbal formulae, as Smuts had already shown in the Transvaal Parliament.