A NEWLY DISCOVERED LAKE NORTH OF KARAKOSCHUN. - EASTERN AND SOUTHERN SHORES OF KARA-KOSCH UN.
I will now leave the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Tarim, and return to the region north of Kara-koschun which in 1900 and 1901 belonged immediately to its hydrographical system. Here again I will stick to the chronological order, for that method is best calculated to bring out the changes which are taking place in the lake-basin.
Fig. IIO. VIEW TO THE EAST, APRIL IST; PART OF THE NEW LAKE NORTH OF KARA-KOSCHUN.
After our first visit to Altmisch-bulak we crossed the desert in a south-southwest direction, and on I st April 1900 reached the shore of a desert lake; at which I was amazed, for we were still 20 km. from the Kara-koschun. But the appearance of the new lake soon showed that it could not be identical with that marsh. Except for two or three tamarisks, its soft and slightly shelving shore was completely sterile, though farther on there were a score or so of small kamisch stalks. Apart from this, the landscape was quite as desolate as the Desert of Lop to the north of it. The water we thus encountered appeared to have come there quite recently, one or two years earlier. The jardangs and dunes had precisely the same shape and appearance as those in the desert south of the Kuruk-darja; but it was they which for the most part determined the extension and contour of the lake. In several places the smaller dunes were already attacked by the water, so that on its first appearance in this part of the desert it must have been possessed of no slight degree of velocity. The outline of the shore was extremely irregular and zigzag, and the lake contained an
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