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
ni
16o WESTWARDS TO LADAK.
All day the wind blew hard from the west, half a storm in fact, and so it did on the i 9th October. The latter day we gave up to rest. In the morning the river was frozen; but by i o a.m. it had dropped 2 dm. below what it was the
it preceding afternoon, and there was nothing left of the ice except narrow, knife-edge
braidings along the banks. But by noon all the ice had disappeared and the river rose again. Its water was perfectly clear; but the volume was quite insignificant, only about i cub.m. at to a. m. The marks in the bed showed however that in summer the Some-tsangpo can swell to a very considerable stream. By the afternoon the volume had increased to about 3 cub.m., and the water was muddy, occasioned in great part by the friction of the ice against the banks. As by 9 p.m. the thermometer had again dropped to — to°, and the sky was perfectly bright, without a breath of wind, we heard the frost weaving its thin coverlet across the water; though even during the night a narrow channel of running water remained open in the middle.
Hard though the wind blew on the t 9th, it blew still harder on the loth
October; in fact it blew a gale. From 7 to 8 a.m., and possibly also earlier during
the night, a slight, but icy, wind blew from the east; no doubt it was the wind
that usually descends the valleys in this region. From 8 to 9.3o a.m. it was a calm,
and then came all at once the usual violent westerly »trade wind», and at t p.m. it changed into one of the most terrific hurricanes that I have ever experienced in Tibet. Here again I had an opportunity to observe how, in consequence of the dry, powdery nature of the soil, a not inconsiderable transportation of solid material takes place in certain localities with the assistance of the wind. This was in fact so heavily charged with clouds of dust and powdered gypsum that the face of the country was sometimes completely hidden from our sight. Picking up these white clouds on the western shore of the lake, it spread them like a veil over its waters, so that the lake looked like a gigantic cauldron all aboil, steaming, smoking, and hissing; while similar trailing fringes and comets' tails of white dust went drifting in amongst the mountains. At this time we were riding along the, lake-side, and the wind struck us with such violence that it made the camels rock and reel, and those who were on horseback had to sit tight to keep their seat. These white clouds and the intense glitter of the shores • were so trying to the eyes that even the Mussulmans and Cossacks, who are not very sensitive on that score, actually had to put on blue spectacles. And from the way in which the animals also kept blinking their eyelids it was plain, that the glare was objectionable to them.
When we started again we first forded the river and then proceeded to travel west. After fifteen degrees of frost (C.) the ice was stronger than on the morning before, but there was still an open channel down the middle of the river. Nevertheless the ice was not so thick but that the animals trod through it; the bottom of the channel was also frozen, and on it the camels kept slipping. For a good long way we had the river immediately on our right; generally it is bordered by scarped terraces 2 m. high and consequently its bed is sharply defined. Between it and the southern range extends a long, narrow strip of hard, perfectly barren gravelly ground. We then passed the gap in that range which leads by an easy pass over to the next latitudinal valley and, on our right, a small detached butte, which however
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