THE EASTERN ASTIN-TAGH. 325
January I st 1901. The morning was perfectly clear, but early in the afternoon the sky clouded, and later on the clouds condensed together. Then the storm burst, and the masses of air poured on through the valleys like veritable cascades.
We still continued to travel towards the east-north-east, and in that direction the surface now sensibly rose. The two ranges which inclose the latitudinal valley still preserved the same characteristics as before, but the range on the right, i. e. the south, still remained incomparably the bigger. The ancient road likewise continued, its course being indicated by numerous cairns of stones; but we perceived no signs of its having been used by recent travellers. The snow again increased in quantity and the thin snow-drifts were generally mantled with a slight layer of drift-dust. Superficially the snow was hard and tenacious, the crust being strong enough to bear us; indeed in some places it was converted into ice. For the greater part of the day we followed the principal watercourse of the latitudinal valley, which was now bordered on the north by a more or less continuous escarpment. The watercourse runs quite close to the base of the range on the south, so that the deepest part of the valley lies on that side, though previous to that it lay in the northern half, that is where the transverse glens cut their way through it. We marched in fact so close to the southern range that every now and again we had to skirt round its more protuberant bluffs and promontories. The northern range increases rather in height towards the east. At length the latitudinal valley grew narrower. Keeping on to the north-east and north-north-east, we climbed up to its eastern pass, a low and easy saddle, situated close under the foot of the northern range. Just south of it there appeared to be a second similar pass, though lower; but it probably is on a less convenient and less suitable road to Anambaruin-gol.
From this pass, which has an altitude of 3494 m. and is crowned by a pyramid of stones, we saw the »Anembarula», which Prschevalskij discovered, though a more correct designation is Anambar- or Anambaruin-ula. On the side next us it had some smaller snowfields. Between us and it a dark streak betrayed the gorge of the Anambaruin-gol. This glen, by which we went down from the pass, is embraced between low hills, and possesses a much steeper declivity than the western acclivity up to the pass. It forms, at all events in part, the eastward prolongation of our old latitudinal valley. Its character was however now so far altered that a stretch of hills ran down its middle. It was by the glen on the north side of these hills that we made our way down to the Anambaruin-gol, and on the south side of the same hills there was evidently a similar glen, which, starting from the lower and more southerly pass at the east end of our old latitudinal valley, joins the lower end of the new glen down which we were marching. The latter slowly widens oilt, the hills are gradually replaced by rounded mountains, and the bottom of the glen is stony, and the grazing good. In the end its watercourse becomes unusually deeply excavated; the northern terrace, on our left, is the most energetically modelled and is frequently divided into two or three steps; its bed was full of gravel. The Anambaruin-gol, down which a little rill of water was then trickling, though there were at the same time sheets of ice in its bed, also possesses a distinctly marked terrace on its left bank. On the right bank, where we pitched camp (alt. 2878 m.), there was a stone inclosure for sheep, as also a stone hut. But neither
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