| | | | | | | | | without bringing home a single reliable figure. Bower's and Littledale's statements, for example, are far too scanty to allow of scientific conclusions being drawn from them, and even though we are bound to accord our heartiest admiration to these geographical pioneers, we are at the same time constrained to recognise that their journeys are not exactly of especially great value. And the same remark applies in a high degree to Prschevalskij, Roborovskij, and Kosloff, though in other domains they have done much very excellent work, and accomplished a good deal for geography. Still we expect more from modern explorers than we do from a Fa Hian, a Hwen Tsang, or a Marco Polo. To judge from Littledale's map and Nain Singh's, I should for some days be travelling north of the route of the former and south of the route of the latter, and should then cross over Nain . Singh's route, and after that have them both on the south; finally at Tso-ngombo I should again come into contact with Nain Singh's route for a few days. Meanwhile the basin of the Batsa-singi disappeared like a long white plain behind us, as we entered the outlet of the transverse glen and climbed up it towards the north-north-west. Its watercourse possesses fairly rounded edges, and it appeared to be a long time since water flowed that way; in any case it is very seldom that large quantities of water do make their way down it. The glen is broad, and the surrounding mountains relatively high, though their outlines are for the most part rounded. Hard rock was rare. Then follows a belt of soft, sandy soil, covered with an abundance of grass, the best in fact that we had seen since leaving the Perutse-tso. Unfortunately there was no water, so that we were unable to encamp there. In a large open expansion of the glen, under the pass, we passed on the left three small crescentic dunes, not more than 3 m. high, which turned their steep, leeward sides towards the north-east. They are arranged in a straight line: that is to say with a hard wind the sand would be able to travel from the first to the second, and from the second to the third. Thus they lie in one and the same wind-furrow; but neither to the south-east of them nor to the north-west was there discernible the smallest tendency to even the beginnings of dune-formation. Taking the line through the highest point of the crest of each dune, they stretch from southwest to north-east, the reason of this being, I dare say, that these mountains deflect the west wind to the south-east, and the origination of dunes just at this spot is explicable solely on the ground of the favourable locality. But immediately southwest, as immediately north-east, of this chain of dunes those favourable conditions no longer exist, and the formation of dunes is prevented either by the character of the surface or by the relations of the wind. These three dunes must therefore be looked upon as immovable and stationary. From the first one, which lies farthest south-west, sand can indeed be wafted to the middle dune, and from it farther to the one in the north-east; but from this last, which may be regarded as having reached a stationary altitude and unalterable dimensions, the sand is carried farther towards the north-east up the mountain-slopes, without getting a chance to stop and form fresh dunes; the reason being no doubt that that part of the glen and its slopes are too directly exposed to the strong wind, which sweeps away everything in its path. Thus our three dunes can no more grow in altitude than they can advance |
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