out the Tarim system. When this melted in the spring, it gave rise to a heavy spring-flood, and although the main body of this did not pass Abdal before the first days of April, it would nevertheless certainly make itself felt in the end of March, even as far from the embouchure of the river as this. I was also told, that the exceptionally violent spring-flood had washed away a long stretch of the left bank of the Tarim, and that the Basch-köl had risen very considerably, and no doubt the same was true also of the other lakes situated in the sand. These statements do not however admit of any sure conclusions being drawn from them, for they emanate from a couple of my Cossacks, who only saw the rivers and lakes on two separate occasions. That the volume of the Tarim does change from year to year is unquestionably true, even though it be within narrower limits than those which apply in the case of rivers that flow to the peripheries of the continents. And as it changes, so also does the volume of the Kara-koschun. But the principal cause why the latter overflowed and made its way north in the spring of 1901 was evidently this, that its own basin is no longer able to hold so much water as it used to do in the past, and consequently the water has to find an outlet in some other direction.
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