102 THE TARIM RIVER.
the right was called Taraschah. On the left we had an isolated belt of barren sand, traversed by an old watercourse, which dried up long ago, and now joins the Tarim some distance lower down. The name given to it is Kurukdarja, or the Dry River, a designation which is often employed for similar disused watercourses. Next we came, on the left, to Talluk-bulung, with two or three huts; then on the right, in a poplar grove, surrounded by sand-dunes bearing vegetation, to the masar of Sultan Kökmet Attam Busrugvar, round which the river describes a half-circle, in that, after flowing due east, it suddenly turns at right angles to the south. On the same side of the river is the Jeschil-köl, in a watercourse which only contains water at the season of high flood. Behind the opposite bank, which is overgrown with forest and kamisch, lies an unusually large and elongated lake, filled with gloriously translucent water. It sleeps in an arm which was then cut off from the Tarim, its mouth being completely dry, though it becomes filled at high flood. Immediately above this there is, also on the same side of the river, another watercourse, which, taking a short cut, rejoins the Tarim at Dästar near some huts and poplars. Below Bostan-toghrak there is another similar »short cut», with a miniature cascade in its lower part. The big south-west bend which the river makes here appears as if it were likely soon to be abandoned. The banks were again most distinctly scarped, and consisted mostly of sand and tamarisk mounds, more or less undermined. At Arik-aghsi we passed on the left yet another old watercourse.
November I I th. The drop in 12 hours = 1.3 cm. The transparency was 4.8 cm. at 7 a. m. and 4.0 cm. at I p. m. The banks were 2.05 m. high; the high-water level 1.77 m. In this part the river is known as the Ögen or the Terem, but is not called the Jarkent-darja. With the Intschkä-darja it stands in a sort of reciprocal relation, in that, when the Ögen is higher, a portion of its water flows over into the Intschkä, and when the latter is higher, a portion of its water seeks the °gen. One channel, situated at Kök-tschol, serves both rivers. The course of the Intschkä, however, and the nature of its connection with the Schah-jar-darja have not yet been investigated. It is probable that the hydrography of the region is more intricate than our maps imply, and that one, if not more, of the streams from the Tien-schan find their way into the Tarim.
The banks of the river used now to freeze every night, though they invariably thawed again during the day. This caused them to crack, very materially assisting the erosive action of the river, as we could hear from the incessant landslips which kept occurring all through the warmer hours of the day. Indeed at noon we now began to see thin cakes of ice still remaining on the stagnant pools and detached sheets of water. Huts were very numerous, though it was only in two places that we found shepherds still living in them. We observed canoes at five places; they were now precisely of the same shape as the Lop canoes, though the paddles were still concave like shovels.
During the first half of the day's journey the river showed great fickleness, there being several abandoned loops on both sides, generally only one or two years old, and mostly quite short. Most of them, too, contained water, in every case frozen. The river is broad and shallow, and in several places overflows its banks at high
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