ICE AND SOUNDINGS IN THE TSO-NGOMBO. 301
Between the two lies a wide, sweeping bay, upon which a larger glen opens out, with a conspicuous summit at the head of it. In the N. 72° W. we caught glimpses of a snowy crest, with one or two powerfully modelled pyramidal peaks.
The pointed promontory offered rather a difficult passage: we had to lead the camels one by one first up the steep, slippery rocky slope, strewn with pieces of schist, and then down again just as steeply, while the men carried on their backs the most valuable of my boxes. The ice round this cape was not strong enough to allow us to use it in the same way as we did the ice at Gardang. The part of the lake lying south of the big bay was open, and under the impact of the hard wind the waves were running high. It was only in the innermost part of the bay that there was a narrow ribbon of ice, though quite close to the shore the lake was kept open by springs. In the eastern part of the large bay in which the lake is narrow, the ice formed as it were a bridge diagonally across it and appeared to be fastened to the southern shore.
Beyond the pointed promontory lay another large bay of almost precisely the same appearance as the first; but it was more troublesome to march round owing to the great number of small rocky spurs, so that the caravan made painfully slow progress. Upon reaching the west side of this bay we turned almost due south, and then had immediately on our right flatter slopes, strewn with a thin and rather scattered coating of drift-sand, which here and there rose into dunes. We were witnesses of how the sand is brought thither by the wine , and settles in crevices and gullies to the leeward. Owing to the configuration of the surface these dunes get no opportunity to reach a greater height or size, and the wind keeps them pretty
constantly at the same level.
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