TO THE GREAT NAMELESS RANGE.
in itself sufficiently exacting because of the exceeding attenuation of the atmosphere, but it is made doubly difficult when you have such a storm in your teeth. You get wet through and almost frozen. It is hard work to go on map-making, when your view is restricted; and you cannot help pitying the poor caravan animals which at every step sink into the softened ground, for by this the surface was converted into a pudding of mire. After the most violent of the hail-showers had lasted an hour and a half, the face of the country was everywhere perfectly white, but both hail and snow quickly melted in the slushy mire. During the second half of the march the clouds parted and we obtained a view of the magnificent glaciated mass on the right of our route.
Fig. 371. LOOKING FROM CAMP XL TOWARDS THE N 200 W.
A little way above Camp XL three streams of about the same size converge from as many different directions — one from the east or east-south-east, another from the south-west, both issuing from glaciers. The middle one of the three led us up to the pass itself; it too was fed almost entirely by glacier water. We kept to its left side. The fall was sometimes so slight, that the water just crept along with a slow and noiseless movement, its bed being only i to 2 m. broad, though often i m. deep; in vertical section it resembled the annexed illustration (see fig. 372). In the deep basins or pools that form at the bends of the stream the water was as clear as crystal and of a lovely blue-green colour. The banks formed soft and frequently overhanging ramparts, with tender, green yak-grass, as soft as velvet, the
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