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0496 Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4
Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 / Page 496 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000216
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CHAPTER XXII.

FROM THE PANGGONG-TSO TO LEH.

On the r 7th December I rode to Drugub, leaving the caravan to follow slowly after me. The valley is not broad, but it is only really narrow and confined in those places in which the gravelly screes meet from both sides. Such places are on the whole very numerous in this valley and the screes of great size, and thus bear evidence of an active disintegration. There are any quantity of blocks of grey granite, and sometimes the big screes of these fragments made riding difficult; black schists also occur. At length the valley widens out to an open grassy plain, though the grass had been closely grazed. Above this, and pretty high up, we observed a terrace. On the same side of the valley is a copious spring known as Palungtuksi. Its rivulet trickles along a deep, narrow bed, with mossy, grass-grown sides, which makes its way down the black schists on the right side of the valley. A frozen lake at Camp CL sent out a rill, it is true, but it soon came to an end; but the rivulet from the Palung-tuksi continues on down the valley, although at no great distance below the spring it was then frozen. It contained some small fish, but lower down the fish were both larger and more numerous. A little bit farther down the valley there was another ice-sheet, and yet another clothed, as it were, with a breastplate, a gravelly scree which overhangs the station of Mukleb on the left side of the valley. At that place there is a station-house surrounded by other huts and willow-trees, and, on the right side of the river, a couple of corn-fields, irrigated by a canal. We also observed an obo, with a tschorten.

Erosion terraces were noticeable at intervals on both sides of the valley, though they are frequently broken or damaged by gravelly screes. At Dschagtag there are one or two steadings between the river and the left side of the valley, leaving but a narrow passage. Every now and again we passed a picturesque cape, as well as small isolated rocky »snags» sticking up from the level floor of the valley. In a corner near a headland we came upon a waterfall, barely a meter high, though it was then frozen into a solid mass of ice.

At this point the valley all at once changes its character. Wheeling abruptly to the south-west, it runs for some distance due south, and at the same time becomes wild, and choked with gravel and fragments of grey granite. Often we rode