IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 |
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Citation Information
THE NAKTSONG-TSO — EAST AND SOUTH.
57
and the levelling influence of the atmospheric agencies, which have unquestionably destroyed innumerable moraines and other glacial traces that in this region were directly exposed to their effects. I have already pointed out, that this pier-like projection is a formation of quite a different character from those I have mentioned above; and there is no reason why we may not suppose, that several similar moraine ridges are still hidden under the waters of the Naktsong-tso, in which case they will not come to light until the lake has dropped still further. The material of which our pier-like projection is built up does not admit of any sufficiently trustworthy inferences being drawn from it. The circumstances under which I visited this part of Tibet prevented me from instituting a thorough and desirable investigation into this matter. If my theory is correct, one would expect to find that the pier consists in the main of moraine gravel; and it is very probable, that it does for the most part consist of such ; but it has subsequently, through the binding and arresting power of the grass, become sheeted with drift-dust, which has gathered there in the dry season. Anyway the only conclusion at which I was able to arrive is, that we really have here an old moraine, modified in a secondary degree by extraneous accidental circumstances.
September 15th. Never have I been more charmed and fascinated by the beauties of a scene and the wild picturesqueness of nature than I was by those which I witnessed in the course of this day. When you are the first to find your way through a watery labyrinth such as that of the Naktsong-tso, and have not the slightest guidance from either map or native, you are kept all the time in a state of expectation. I asked myself again and again, how long this narrow channel was to continue, and whether the land which we had on our right hand really was an island, for if it turned out to be a peninsula, we should have to paddle all the way back again. A little later on we discovered on it two tents, with half a dozen people about them, as well as a troop of horses and a herd of yaks; this seemed to point to its being a peninsula, otherwise these people and their animals could not have reached it from the mainland. We ascertained subsequently, that it really is something intermediate between an island and a peninsula.
It was a still and beautiful morning; at 8 a.m., after a slight frost during the night, the thermometer stod at + 4.1°, while the water at the same time registered 8.2°. In this shallow, sheltered sound it may well be believed, that the winter ice reaches a considerable thickness. The nomads would therefore be able to take short cuts across the lake, and the heaps of stones and »sign-posts» on the little rocky island prove that they actually do so.
On the inside of the pier-like projection, at the root of which we were encamped, is the opening of the narrow passage which we had to follow for hours. On our right we had a short mountain-range, running towards the southwest, and consequently parallel with the sound ; in fact, it might well pass for an offshoot of the middle of the three ranges that I have mentioned above. But in this respect there is a great difference between the eastern and western shores of the island. Whereas on the east we had seen only three ranges, terminating in three promontories, on the west we passed no less than eight forks of the mountains, though those to the north were less distinctly separated from one another than those to the south.
He din, Tourney in Central Asia. iV. 8
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