remains constant to its existing bed — i. e. the final stage of it — for a sufficient length of time, it will eventually destroy the whole of the Kara-koschun, after which this lake will then sink to the humbler position of a marginal lagoon. The ramparts and piers which the river is now building in certain parts of the Kara-koschun, especially on the border-line between this lake and the new desert-lakes to the north, prove that it is actually tending in the direction indicated.
What I have said with regard to the orientation of the long axes of the lakes applies also to the rivers. In those sections of its course in which the river flows from north to south, it follows the old bajir depressions, but in its south-west to north-east sections it traverses wind-eroded gullies similar to those of the Desert of Lop. In these latter sections its bed is straighter than in the meridional sections.
This brings to an end this greatly condensed résumé of the Tarim system, except that in a separate chapter I shall have to consider the relative altitudes and the river's relations to the same. It would serve no purpose to enumerate here the names of the various arms of the lower Tarim, for they are all streams of a purely ephemeral character. In the future the hydrographical arrangement will — and of absolute necessity must — be different from what I found it in 1899 and 1900. I have already said, and now repeat again, that it would be very interesting, some ten years hence, to make yet another journey down the Tarim under precisely the same conditions as those under which I carried out this journey, that is to say at the same season of the year, and to construct a map on precisely the same scale. A comparison of the two maps, supposing them drawn with the same degree of accuracy, would allow of far surer and more wide-reaching conclusions being drawn than those which I have been able to deduce. It would also be instructive to journey down the river from the middle of June, when one would be able to witness the effects of the high flood with one's own eyes.
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