| | | 234 WESTWARDS TO LADAK. from the little lake, which we were to pass at some distance to the west-north-west of Camp CXXV, belongs to the region of the desiccated lake. It is evident that, at the period when the climate was moister than it is now, erosion played a much more active rôle in this valley than it does at the present time. For instance, here and there at the foot of the northern range we observed little hollow excavations or grottoes, which can hardly have been produced by anything else except running water, unless one prefers to ascribe them to an ancient glacier which made its way down this valley to the big dried up lake. But we saw no other evidences of glacial action, neither scratches nor moraines nor erratic blocks. In shape this northern range is quite unusual, in that it possesses neither gravelly screes nor heaps of detritus, but consists entirely of naked rounded heights. The rock is limestone, brittle and fracturing in several directions. At the narrow part of the valley it dipped 57° S., but elsewhere the dip was indistinct. During the latter part of this stage our chief concern was, as so often happens in these mountainous regions, to discover drinking water. At last we had to send pioneers on ahead. One of these men found a small spring with ice-sheets round it in a transverse glen, another a frozen brook in the middle of the latitudinal valley, and there we pitched Camp CXXV at an altitude of 4,564 m. Beside this brook we rested a whole day, in order to give our Tibetans time to catch us up with their slower-footed yaks. This brook is also fed by springs; but it is just possible that it receives water from the lake that lies above it, although that is now destitute of outlet, this supposition being rendered probable by reason of the freshness of the water in the lake. On our arrival we found only a narrow strip of ice in the bed of the stream ; but by the afternoon of the i i th November quite a little rivulet was flowing down it, though it was derived solely from melting ice. According to the Tibetans, such heavy rains fall in this locality in summer that it is often impassable owing to the soft and treacherous character of the ground. As for the winds, they were considered to be unusually quiet and favourable that year; generally however at that season they are so paralyzing that it is impossible to remain out in the open air when they are blowing. The locality is reported not to be visited by the nomads either in the summer or in the winter. When however we detected signs of three tents in the neighbourhood, we were told that they were due to vagrants and robbers. The name of the locality in which Camp CXXV stood is Tschuscher. November i 2th. For the greater part of the day the going was first-rate, the surface consisting of smooth, level, easy expanses of clay. We kept close along the foot of the southern range, the latitudinal valley broadening out a little. Over the top of the range on the north we caught sight of yet another range similar to it, and between the two is another latitudinal valley running parallel to that which we were then following, but narrower and essentially unlike it. The eroded watercourses that begin in the more distant range break through the nearer one — the same arrangement which we had already seen so many examples of on the Tibetan highlands. At the head of the northern latitudinal valley there rose a more dominating mountain, slightly sprinkled with snow. The more northerly valley eventually runs out into the one in which we were travelling. At length we ap- |
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