was not a scrap of ice visible anywhere on its surface. And it proved to be as we suspected — intensely salt. The west part of the lake is rather irregular in outline, what with peninsulas and a couple of low sedimentary islands. But a little distance back from the water there was some grass as well as japkak. Drinking water we obtained from what was for that part of the world an unusually large river, which forms a small delta on the south where it enters the lake. This lake, like nearly all others in these latitudinal valleys, is elongated from east to west. The areometer gave a reading of 1.031 at a temperature of 9.i for the water.
This day the same schists prevailed as hitherto, generally with a dip towards the south and south-west. Besides these, we also found near the highest pass a hard porphyry-like species of rock, of a green colour and with a dip of 62° towards the S. 25° W. ; while on the southern side of the same pass was a similar rock dipping 57° towards the S. 39° W. Still farther on came an extremely fine-grained rock, like diabase, of a pitch-black colour and dipping 62° towards the S. 4o° W. In this range the hard rock cropped out more frequently than usual from the otherwise soft disintegrated materials of the hills. This material consisted almost exclusively of flakes of red and green sandstone; in fact, the highest pass was thickly strewn with them. Very occasionally I observed a quartz crystal lying on the surface of the ground. Where the hard rock does become visible, it is generally on the brae-sides, on the ridges, and at the low passes. The entire face of the country is uniformly flattened down and smoothed out; one looks everywhere in vain for sharp-pointed projections or rugged peaks or eminences. As my data show, the relative differences of altitude are very slight. Our camp this day stood at an altitude of 4946 m., consequently only 17o m. lower than the highest pass which we had crossed
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