been formed by the action of the ice. At this particular season of the year all the water both of the lakes and of the river is derived from springs, several of which discharge into the lake on the south. This uniform inflow accounts for the constant volume of the river, which is entirely unaffected by the time of day ' at the season in which the melting of the snows is practically quite neutralized. The name given to this lake by our Tibetan guards was Dschandin-tso, while they called the country around Camp XCIX Somdü-dschalün-tsagma, the mountains to the south Nemba, and the nearest range on the north Sendo; though it is of course impossible to say how far this information is reliable. In the last-mentioned range there occurred schists, in part black and soft, like graphite, in part hard and finely crystalline. On the whole the country impressed me pleasantly and sympathetically. I learnt from this little excursion to the lakes that the sources of the Tschuring lie much nearer to the great latitudinal valley than I had imagined they do. The river cuts its way through only one range.
On 9th October the little lake was again covered with a thin sheet of ice. We were still accompanied by the everlasting westerly wind, and no matter whether we travelled north-west or south-west, it always blew straight in our faces. The sky was of perfect serenity, not a speck of cloud to mar its purity. After leaving the lake we travelled west, crossing the river and doubling the almost free-standing mountain buttress, and then entered the throat of the broad glen which the day before we had seen due south. This glen comes from another arena-like valley expansion, upon which other glens converge from every direction. Leaving that expansion to the south, we ascended the slowly rising valley that approaches from the west-south-west. This cauldron-shaped valley is marked by one unusual feature, in that a very small free-standing butte rises in the middle of it. To right and to left of
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