IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
14
132
WESTWARDS TO LADAK.
I it
k
takes its origin, and which when seen in profile has something of the appearance shown in the accompanying sketch (fig. 79). Nevertheless the mountain in question is not a volcano, nor does it bear the slightest resemblance to a volcanic cone. When seen from the east, as Littledale beheld it, or from our Camp XCV, whence we perceived it to the S. 76° W., it does, I grant, look like a single crest; but it is then viewed in foreshortened perspective, its eastern fork only being visible. When seen however from the pass with the streamers, it clearly shows a not inconsiderable extension east and west, and consequently runs parallel to every other chain in that locality. From its neighbours it is distinguished by its very considerable altitude, in that it towers up like a veritable giant above the chaos of mountains
around it.
October 5th. Although the cold was not per se especially severe, yet taken in conjunction with the inconceivably violent wind which was then blowing from the west, and consequently driving straight in our faces, it made in that regard about the utmost limit of what a man can bear. And yet the sun shone out almost all day long: it was only at two o'clock that the sky was somewhat clouded. But the wind completely neutralized the sunshine, the effects of which are sometimes so great, even in winter, that the skin sloughs off your face every second or third day. Not one drop of either rain or hail or snow fell. Even the Tibetans of our escort found the weather too keen for them to ride; they too got off and walked. But walking also is extremely trying; I for my part was unable to walk in that rarefied atmosphere and violent wind. The method that I adopted was to keep my saddle until my fingers refused to render service, and then to get off and rest in the shelter of some buttress or in a ravine, until the circulation was restored. In fact under such conditions I can readily understand how it is not difficult for a man to freeze to death: you get numbed, become insensible to feeling, and without suspecting it you drop off to sleep and never waken again.
During the night the stream froze at our camp, and in the morning in the quiet reaches it was completely frozen over. In some places the ice-sheets got adrift and became subsequently heaped up after the fashion of b Tosses, or the piled up bergs, of the (Siberian) Arctic Ocean. A flock of wild geese, which had settled in the vicinity of our camp, were probably on their way south; for it is safe to say, that these birds would fail to find sustenance in Tibet in winter after all the freshwater surfaces have become frozen. From our camp the river Tschuring flowed at first towards the north-east, though it keeps that direction for only a short distance. The Tibetans declared, that farther on it joins the Bogtsang-tsangpo, and the statement is very likely true. Littledale however shows it on his map flowing definitely towards the north-east. The river is forced to adopt its north-easterly course by the steep precipice, already mentioned, which forms a northern outlier of the range that we crossed over the clay before. All day long we had this range rising like a vertical wall on the east side of the latitudinal valley; but in point of fact the precipice would appear to make the river describe an angle only, after which I have no doubt it resumes its east-west direction. Finally it breaks through the range which we had on the south by one of the gaps that we had seen in it farther east, and so effects a confluence with the other stream.
J
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.