immediately on our right the red rocky buttresses of a bluff, the external features of which are however rounded in character. The mountain-range on the opposite or south-east side of the lake is high and imposing. Camp CXVI was formed on the lake-shore, its altitude being 4509 m. Some nomads were resting not very far away.
I took my first geological specimen that day not far from the preceding camp; it was a hard, red porphyritic variety, dipping 33° towards the S. 6o° E. The same rock occurred in several different varieties in the reddish bluff above Camp CXVI, its dip there being extraordinarily distinct at 16° towards the N. 3o° E. By reason of this position it shows long, red, sharply defined edges jutting out of the detritus on the southern flank of the mountains.
The 28th October was a fairly interesting day, though the wind blew hard from the west with a serene sky; there was more variety than on the preceding days. Not far west of Camp CXVI we passed a very low rectangular stone wall, a few meters long and divided by an internal wall into two parts. Our Tibetans could not or would not tell me what it was for; but probably it marks the site of what was once a little temple, for not very far from it there exists an obo of precisely the same kind as that which we passed the day before. As a rule, and especially in Ladak, these mane kists are almost always built in the vicinity of a temple. But the temple or monastery beside the Oman-tso appears to have been deserted long ago; or it may be that its constructors never advanced farther with it than the foundations. There are no stones scattered about the vicinity to betray the possible collapse of a wall.
Our latitudinal valley, which at the Oman-tso joins the big open depression of the Dadap-tso, led us to the west-south-west. The Oman-tso soon comes to an end in a long tapering bay, then covered with ice. The lake is continued towards the west-south-west by a narrow hollow, which we kept immediately on our left. It was full of marshes and pools and contained several freshwater springs. In the range on the southern side of the valley one sharp-pointed snow-capped peak close at hand was an especially conspicuous object: it sends out spurs towards the north, between which steep transverse glens open out. Above that peak comes the outlet of a particularly big transverse glen, the stream of which originates a long way east of the round-topped peak, and upon emerging into the latitudinal valley it gives rise to a flat fan-shaped gravelly scree, which encroaches upon the valley to such an extent that at the foot of the northern range there is only room for a narrow strip of level ground.
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