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
154
WESTWARDS TO LADAK.
West of the spur in which the little bel is situated, we crossed over the extreme tips of three similar minor spurs before we reached the level floor of the valley and the former lake-bottom. Thus we did not cross at all over the second and third beach-lines counting from the top; but we did cross over the fourth, fifth, and sixth, and each of these three manifestly forms a terrace. The seventh we passed quite close on our right hand; and we also crossed over the eighth, ninth, and tenth, these being of rampart shape. The accompanying contour sketch (fig. 88) will illustrate the difference between the three upper beach-lines and the three lower ones. These beach-lines are curved like an arc, just as the highest one is, although the arc grows of course wider the lower you descend, because the valley opens out like a trumpet in this direction. The beach-lines from the eleventh to the eighteenth we did not touch at all, but we left them to the right, that is north-west of our route. I need hardly say that these curves are not parallel to one another, for they lie closer together on the steeper slopes, but wider apart in the middle, where the bottom of the latitudinal valley is flattest.
One interesting circumstance connected with the six lowest strand-ramparts is that each of them dams up behind it a long, narrow, crescentic lagoon, and these contain increasingly greater quantities of water in proportion as you descend towards the lake. Similar lagoons, which formerly existed behind some of the upper ramparts, have recently dried up, as was evident from certain expanses of yellow mud which we observed. These formations prove clearly, that the stream, in such seasons as it flows at all, really does possess a subterranean course all the way down from the highest rampart, and that it gradually emerges again in the form of springs, the water from which is dammed back by these ramparts. Since however the water, although temporarily held up, is always trickling down from the upper lagoons towards the lake, it naturally follows that the lower-lying lagoons, which receive increments from all those that lie above them, are the largest in size.
Fig. 89.
li
To the north-west we saw the northern end of the lake, forming a regularly shaped shore-line. In the same direction there appeared to' be a pass, but a rather high one. It was in the latitudinal valley over on the other side of this pass that Littledale travelled. On the north-east, north, north-west, and west, the shores of the lake are encroached upon by small spurs of the mountains and detached offshoots
Fig. 88.
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