462 A NEW JOURNEY SOUTHWARDS.
in the bottom of the watercourse we obtained perfectly fresh water at a depth of only o.56 m. ; its temperature was + 4.2°. The water in the pools lay a good deal lower than the bottom of the watercourse. The surface of the little salt lake had an altitude of 4923 m., and Camp XXXII was only 20 m. higher. This was the lowest point we had touched since leaving the Arka-tagh; the last time we were as low as this was in the neighbourhood of Camp XVIII on the north side of the Arkatagh. Subsequently to this I frequently had occasion to observe that these desiccated salt lakes, with their strongly saline shores, always lie at a relatively insignificant
altitude.
On the 8th July we made our way slowly up the glen in which our camp had stood. The slope was insignificant, but it was hard work marching because of the attenuated atmosphere. Wild yaks and kulans abounded, and manifested no particular degree of shyness. The pass, at an altitude of 5059 m., possesses the usual flattened summit. Between the crest in which it is situated and the next range appeared several self-contained basins, each with a small lake in the middle, and separated from one another by ramifications and offshoots of the ranges. All these contained fresh water. The first three, which lie quite close together, are only one or two meters lower than the pass, though 13o m. higher than the salt lake; they are entered by several dry gullies coming from the west. In that same direction there appeared a latitudinal valley, but a good deal narrower than is usually the case. At the fourth lake we were stopped by the steep acclivity leading up to the next crest, and as the camels were unable to climb it, we turned off towards the east-north-east, striking into a dry torrential bed that ascends slowly in that direction. Soon however it entered a fifth little circular freshwater lake. On the south of it we came across two dry basins with distinctly marked shore-lines round them; these had formerly been connected with the fifth lake. Since their shore-lines are so sharply defined in the soft sediment, so soft indeed as to be readily modelled by the rain, it is safe to infer that the lake, or rather shallow pool, will, after a copious rainfall, rise so far as to run over and discharge its surplus water into the two southern depressions, both of which again are shallow. Had the dry period persisted somewhat longer, probably this pool, beside which we made Camp XXXIII (alt. 5041 m.), would likewise have disappeared. Its bottom is so flat, that not many rainy days would be required to fill it full. The grazing in its vicinity was worse than it had been hitherto, though still good enough to use. Wild garlic and japkak also existed. Traces of wild animals were common, and gulls were swimming on the small lakes.
Near the pass that we crossed over the hard rock cropped out in the form of a dark variety, very hard and finely crystalline, with a dip of 49° towards the S. 75° W., and this variety appeared to predominate all the way to the next camp, although always disintegrated. In one respect this part of the Tibetan highlands is different from the regions I had previously visited. Hitherto the ranges we had crossed over had with tolerable regularity been distinctly outlined and continuous, with great broad latitudinal valleys between them, each of which took us one or two days to cross over it. Now however we had entered a region in which the mountain crests not only come closer together, but are lower and smaller, and at
IIIFカラー高解像度
