444 A NEW JOURNEY SOUTHWARDS.
and got entangled amongst the diversities of its southern slopes, the prospect became restricted and shut in, and we no longer knew where we were. The next east-west range lies a long way to the south. We recognised again the characteristic morphology which we had studied on our previous summer's excursion, and which may be briefly defined thus: the traveller who proceeds across the highlands of Tibet in a meridional direction has to cross over a whole series of mountain-ranges running east and west. Yet though it is thus a vast deal easier to travel through the country in a direction parallel to its mountain-ranges, that is to say, along one of the great latitudinal valleys; on the other hand it is immensely more instructive to cross over them all at right angles. And in this particular part of Tibet we have, as it happens, several such meridional routes, namely those of Bonvalot, Littledale, Dutreuil de Rhins, and my own three; and from this material, as soon as it has all been incorporated on the map, I shall be able to deduce what are the great determinative features of the geography of northern and eastern Tibet. Rockhill's and Carey's itineraries make an excellent supplement to the map, while my own journey in 1896 and Wellby's will show clearly and distinctly the entire course of two of the great latitudinal valleys. It is very interesting to possess detailed maps of these two great valleys, for in the light of what they teach us we may say pretty certainly, that the other latitudinal valleys, at all events those which are situated immediately to the south, will be fairly like them.
From the top of the range on which we were then standing three peaks in particular attracted our attention, namely those which I have designated Y, Z, and A, situated respectively S. 64° E., S. 40° E., S. 2° W.
It is with a feeling of satisfaction that you begin the descent from a range such as this. Your caravan marches easily and without exertion. Nevertheless it is not an unmixed satisfaction you feel, for before you lie, not one range, but several ranges similar to the one you see ; and each in turn tries still more the strength of your animals. The southern slopes are in places rather grassy, but on the whole barren gravel covers the larger area; on the north side the slopes are perfectly barren. We soon crossed over a flat secondary pass (5008 m.), and found ourselves in a descending glen; but as this manifested an increasingly stronger tendency to bend away to the south-east, that is towards the tiresome and abominable country that we had travelled across before, we climbed up out of it towards a third, and rather difficult, pass (5013 m.) on the right. Near it were two slightly ,saline springs in a barren country. The water in two or three of the adjacent watercourses was intensely salt. When travelling in these desolate and inhospitable wilds, no sooner have you covered a fair average day's march than you begin to wonder where you are going to find a suitable camping-ground, with drinkable water and a supply of grazing, together with fuel, which always consists of wild yak dung or the hard dry scrub known as jer-baghri or jaj5kak. As not one of these requisites was discoverable on these particular slopes, we had no alternative but to push on farther. Accordingly we now descended over the barren and desolate slopes and dry glens until we reached the moderate-sized lake down in the latitudinal valley. But even from a distance it was pretty easy to guess that this lake was very salt, because not only was there a chain of hills of a fiery red colour descending pretty steeply towards it, but there
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