360 JOURNEY TO ANAMBARUIN-ULA.
thick, serves to part two of them. Amid the universal whiteness of the snow these scarped precipitous faces had an appearance as of black curtains.
The track climbs up to a small secondary pass on the left-hand slope of the brook of Hun-tu-tschuen-tsa (the Red Spring), which runs towards the N. i o° W., and down on the other side there is a steep descent by a little side-glen to the larger glen of Davoto. We encamped at the point of junction, close beside a square building, its walls constructed of gravel-and-shingle, the binding material of which had for the most part fallen out. From some fragments of whitewash that remained, the edifice would appear once to have had its walls painted. Our Mongol guide informed us, that it was a Chinese temple, and was destroyed some thirty or forty years ago by the Tungans at the time of their first revolt. The temple was exceptionally finely decorated, and possessed a large bell and several idols.
Nowhere did we see hard rock during the course of that day's march; the country was built up exclusively of gravel-and-shingle detritus, products of weathering, which at the northern foot of the Anambaruin-ula form a gigantic scree, gashed and furrowed by a host of brooks and rivulets running down from the mountains. The material consisted for the most part of the same greenstone as before. Large fragments were not uncommon; sometimes they assumed the shape of tables supported ' by pedestals of finer material. All the glens we crossed over, including the last one, Davato, in which we encamped, are much smaller than the glen of Scho-ovo-tu. This is strange, because the distance from the pass of Davato to the foot of the mountains is said to be considerably longer than the corresponding stretch in the case of the Scho-ovo-tu. On the other hand, the pass of Davato is said to be very much easier, the country on both sides of it being much leveller. At our camp (alt. 2805 m.) a spring gushed out in the bed of the Davato brook, forming a large expanse of ice, and we were told that there is another similar spring higher up in a side-glen. After heavy rain the brook of Davato is said to travel to something like a clay's journey from its actual exit out of the mountains, that is to say as far as the beginning of the belt of sand, where lofty dunes are reported to be heaped up.
The grazing around the lower end of the glen of Davato was good, but there was no fuel. Partridges abounded there, as they generally do in the glens of the Anambaruin-ula. At 6 o'clock it began to blow down the glen with almost unparalleled violence. This wind is said to be characteristic of the winter, though not to be associated, as the wind is in the glen of Scho-ovo-tu, with a bright sky; but it also blows when the weather is dull, and after a fall of snow it is sure to set in. Before very long the wind in Davato quickened up to a veritable hurricane; it came from the south-south-west and did not blow steadily, but occurred in extremely violent gusts, threatening to blow over our tents, so that we had to lash them down with extra ropes and anchor them to big stones all round. This icy, blighting wind continued all night, although the thermometer did not drop lower than — i 6°. It is therefore a characteristic of this typical Föhn wind that it raises the temperature of the air. It pours down the steep northern slopes of the mountains like an avalanche, filling up all their glens and being compressed in them to doubled force and violence. But it is confined exclusively to the northern slopes of the Anambaruin-
IIIFカラー高解像度
