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
If
4
ii,
då
AMONG THE DESICCATED LAKES OF WESTERN TIBET. 235
proached the little lake, which was of the usual elongated shape, shallow, covered with thick ice, and containing fresh water. We kept along the southern shore, which was littered with any quantity of wild-goose feathers. The slopes of the southern range reach right down to the shore. Here the Tibetans, who declared as usual that it was an inconceivably long distance to the next spring, filled four sacks with pure glassy ice.
From this lake, which is said to be called the Muschko-tso, the ground slopes up towards a little threshold in the latitudinal valley, hardly noticeable, though it forms the western boundary of the lake. After that the latitudinal valley bends, at all events for some kilometers, towards the west-south-west, at the same time increasing in breadth; on the south it is bordered by a dark range, lightly sprinkled with snow. The slope of the ground is wonderfully gentle. But instead of continuing along the valley, our Tibetans pressed steadily on towards the west-northwest, keeping to the foot of the northern mountains, and making for a pass which we saw in them. The going here was very difficult, owing to the excess of gravel and to the great number of small but deep gullies with which the ground was cut up. One of these gullies was a good deal bigger than the others and had a double erosion terrace on its left side. A little beyond this we made Camp CXXVI at an altitude of 4,678 m., the place being called Lablir. We saw smoke rising out of an adjacent ravine and soon a couple of men appeared. Our Tibetans declared that they were robbers and that we ought calmly to shoot them down! As soon as they caught sight of us the strangers took to flight, and from the evidences that they left behind them at their camp, it was clear that they were only harmless hunters, who were out in quest of meat. And that there were nomads not very far away to the south was also clear from the circumstance that one of our guides procured us a couple of sheep and some milk, and next morning we saw, though at a considerable distance to the south-west, at the foot of the mountains on the opposite side of the big, broad valley, flocks of sheep and herds of yaks, as well as no less than half a dozen little columns of smoke curling up from as many different places. Thus the inhabited parts of Tibet lay to the south of us; the parts which we ourselves had traversed were uninhabited; and probably there were no nomads either to the north. In the middle of the big latitudinal valley we observed, to the south and south-west, extensive areas of yellow clay, the beds of transient alluvial lakes. The southern flanks of the mountains on the north of the valley still continued to be seamed with gullies and eroded rivulets for a long way to the west. The following were the names given to me as those of our immediate surroundings. A small dark mountain promontory at about to km. to the south was called Paramo. The biggest snow-capped range to the south, at a distance of perhaps three days' journey, was the Gangri-tsesum ; its middle peak bore S. J5° W. The range which we were about to cross was the Pagelung. To the N. 310 E. rose the most westerly of the snowy peaks which we had seen at various times
during the preceding days.
November 13th. We ascended the gravelly slope until we reached the outlet of a small glen, narrow and filled with gravel and shut in on both sides by bare cliffs. After that we travelled west-south-west, and it soon turned out that we were
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