excursion that I had planned. The winds out of the north quarters are probably the driest; and yet on 1st September, during a similar north-north-west gale, we were visited by a leaden black hail-storm that came out of the west.
Around our camp were some pools and hills. The shore-line along which we marched on the 4th September, though at a little distance away from it, was excessively jagged and irregular, forming capes, peninsulas, bays, islands, holms, lagoons, and pools, all in miniature. The surface sinks down imperceptibly towards the lake, which is so shallow in its southern part that a long way out the water is coloured a brownish red by the beat of the waves, whereas towards the north it shone blue-green and limpid. Throughout the whole length of the lake the greatest depths undoubtedly occur close to the northern, or rather the north-western, shore.
The ground alongside the lake was horrible, one unbroken morass of soft ooze. In these high altitudes the earth appears to be attenuated like the air. At length we approached the western end of the lake, which is divided into three bays by two stretches of hills. The northern bay we have already made acquaintance with; the middle one appeared to be the largest; the southern bay is entered by the river that connects the eastern with the western lake. This connecting sound is short and almost straight, and full of shallows and mud islands, and appeared to be fordable in several places. Its water was muddier than I had expected to find it, seeing that it issues direct from a clearing-basin. Wild-geese swarmed in flocks of hundreds together and wild-duck were plentiful everywhere, while we also saw an occasional crow, royal eagle, and gull. On the right side of the sound rises one of the spurs of low hills, while the left side is flat and seamed with a countless number of torrents, some with water, others dry, and all surrounded with pools, which appear to be connected, at all events sometimes, with the sound, for two or three of them contained fish. Yet it is probable that what we from our low-lying position took to be separate brooks are in reality only deltaic arms, into which the brooks and streams off the southern mountains divide upon reaching the flat land. Here too the ground consisted entirely of wet mud, brought down from the mountains by the streams. Sometimes this soft ground literally swayed underfoot, and undulated like waves beneath the weight of the caravan.
At the spot where we made Camp XLII the sound measured 82 n1. in breadth, 0.687 m. in mean depth, 0.353 m. in mean velocity, and had a volume of 19.9 cub.-m., or in round numbers 20 cub.m. in the second. By far the greatest portion of this volume is contributed by the river that we followed down to the lake; at the point where we forded it, it had an estimated volume of Io to 15 cub.m. The residue is derived from the innumerable rivulets which flow into it from every quarter. But probably a part of the flood of the principal river is lost before it reaches the lake. For some distance before coming to Camp XLI we marched a little way back from the river; but I have no doubt, that, like the brooks which enter the emissary of the lake, it divides into a number of deltaic arms and pools, the consequence being to enlarge the evaporation area. If the river carries I2 cub.m. when it emerges from the lowest foot-hills, it is fair to assume that not more than I o cub.m. fall directly into the lake, so that 2 cub.m. are consumed in filling the pools and maintaining the
ground in a moist condition.
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