| a stone, was cracked all over in a peculiar manner, some of the cracks being as much as I dm. across. The name of these springs seems to be Hundulung-ussu. The ascent from them to the flat pass at the end of the latitudinal valley was virtually imperceptible. The country was bare and barren; no wild animals to be seen, nothing but a host of kulan tracks. The snow, which was extremely little amongst the recently mentioned labyrinth of hills, now increased again in quantity. Although the amount of snow crowning the chain of snowy peaks which we saw on the north, that is the main crest of the Anambaruin-ula, is not especially great, nevertheless it gives rise to three rudimentary glacier-tongues or hanging glaciers, pointed at their inferior ends. This snowfield is correctly delineated on the map of the Russian General Staff, although the representation of the Anambaruin-ula is on the whole rather schematic and haphazard. The pass at the end of the latitudinal valley is so flat that, had we not had the watercourses to guide us, we might not have been aware of its position (alt. 3929 m.), and even when we had crossed over it, we hardly noticed any difference in the slope of the ground. In the east, but at a great distance, rose an immense snowy mass, belonging pretty certainly to the Nan-schan system, which Obrutscheff has examined. The valley then sloped down east-north-eastwards to a new spring in the bottom of its drainage-channel, where the grass was poor — at all events we on several occasions found better grass upon the plateau of Tibet. None of my men had ever before been in the part of the country in which we were then travelling, nor indeed had any European ever been there. Consequently I failed to obtain the names which the Mongols have given to these mountains, valleys, and rivers. Subsequently I was told however that the pass and the country adjacent to it are called Döröldsche, that the great transverse glen which I mentioned before is known as Ghodscha-tang, and the mountain-mass R i is Taschir-gano. The spring at Camp CXVII (alt. 3903 m.) is said to possess the Chinese name of Sa-tschan. But as it is difficult to identify places merely by description at a distance, I cannot undertake to say that these names are rightly appropriated. The rocks we marched through this day were granite, crystalline schists, frequently interpenetrated by veins of granite and quartzite, as also gneiss. The gale continued to blow all night from the west, and so also on the morning of the 6th January, but at i p.m. it veered round to the east, and finally became north-east. Above the mountainous parts the sky was clear, but over the lowlands, which we now saw in the distance, light clouds were hovering. Our march lay through a monotonous region, though, as marking the close of my mapping of the Astin-tagh system, it was not devoid of interest. I agree with Sheet 62 of Sliders Hana'atlas in retaining the Turkish name as far as Anambaruin-ula, which may be regarded as a boundary between the Astin-tagh and the Nan-schan system, with its many parallel chains, farther east. It is however incorrect to call the former system either »Altyn-tagh, or »Ustun-tagh». Altin (Altyn)-tagh or Astintagh is the name of the lowest range of the system, Ustun-tagh the name of the upper range, though the latter is indeed a rather nebulous and general term. By means of the journey which I have just described, I fortunately succeeded in clear- | :d ~ |
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