One thing you do however learn from a general view like this: namely you learn more distinctly than in any other way how insignificant a single exploring itinerary is amongst such a boundless and little known mountainous country. How often do we not see the statement made, that we are now fairly well acquainted with the geography of Tibet. For my part, I should prefer to say, that we possess merely a glimmering of the broad, main features of the physical geography of the country; but we cannot boast, that we possess even the rudest reconnaissance map of the whole of Tibet. The routes of the travellers — painfully few! — which cross the country in different directions embrace between them a very small percentage of its area, and there still remains an inconceivably vast amount of work to be done in this respect.
When viewed from our higher point of vantage the plain of Rinak-sumdo gave in a still higher degree than before the impression of being a desiccated lake-basin, and it was from there that we first obtained a distinct general view of the many small lakes and marshes which occupy the whole of its southern side, and almost give the impression of being the last survivors of a single large lake, which has shared the fate of so many other Tibetan lake-basins and has disappeared. In the south-east there stood out a fantastic, snow-clad mountain-mass, belonging to the main range which we had had pretty close to us on the south ever since leaving the region of Naktsong-tso. To the north and north-east, that is in the country we were about to traverse, rose a whole series of smaller mountain crests, with pinnacled, serrated forms, putting one in mind of crenelated, fortified walls. Amongst them one detached rocky pinnacle was especially conspicuous, by rising like a gigantic pillar out of the disintegration material. A few hundred meters higher up some smaller patches of snow were still remaining.
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