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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
ROCKHILL'S JOURNEY ACROSS TIBET. 463
June 27th. We continued to-day in the same west-south-west direction as yesterday, along the foothills of the Dang la, crossing a number of torrents, one about two feet deep and thirty to forty feet wide, but flowing in a bed at least one-third of a mile in width. The soil is everywhere fine gravel and very little grass grows anywhere on it. Our view of the Dang la and its snow-fields is absolutely unobstructed. I cannot decide whether there are any glaciers; I am inclined to think there are none. The rocks I see are all limestone and granite. The whole country, as far as I can see, is covered with hills, between which are pools and lakelets receiving all the drainage.
June 28th. A couple of miles from camp we crossed a low col, and then
took a south-west course over a perfectly bare plain of gravel, cut here and there by torrents, some with beds over half a mile wide, which empty into a stream flowing westward and which we called, on account of the great quantity of ice on its surface, Kétén gol or »Cold River». We are now well to the west of the Dang la, which stretches out in a south-east by south direction, as far as we can see. Some twenty miles south of us we can distinguish a short range of black hills, and nearer to us in the same quarter another short range, running south-east and north-west, from which issue several streams emptying a mile below our camp into the Kétén gol. No mountain-range of any importance beside the Dang la can be seen, but innumerable little blocks of hills intersect the country in every direction. The soil is very barren; where we have camped there is a little grass, but elsewhere there is only sand and gravel. The soft wet gravel, through which we have of late travelled so much, has been very trying on the feet of our ponies and mules; every one of them is lame.
June 3oth. The hills to the west-south-west of our camp, and over the southern
extremity of which we had to pass, are composed largely of flints. From their summit we caught our first glimpse of a large expanse of dark blue water about twelve miles to the south-west, and on whose western shore rises a steep and bare red sandstone hill. We crossed the Kétén gol at its mouth on the shore of the lake, and camped on a green hill-slope one hundred feet above the water. The lake is about fifteen miles in its greatest length (north-east to south-west) and in places seven or eight miles wide. The water of the lake is nearly undrinkable, and possibly there are deposits of pure salt near here. The grazing is splendid.
July I st. Our route lay parallel to the shore of the lake over a slightly un-
dulating country. About three miles south of our camp we crossed a good-sized though shallow river, which comes from out the hills to the south-east, some ten to fifteen miles away. Farther on we crossed the dry beds of several torrents; they were nearly a mile in width in many places. We camped about nineteen miles south-west of our camp of yesterday, on the bank of another small stream flowing into the lake from the hills which surround it on the south. The water of this stream like that of all those emptying into this lake, is very brackish, nearly unfit for use. I was unable to detect any outlet for the waters of the lake, though it seems hardly credible that evaporation can dispose of the enormous quantity which must flow into it, and I have seen no signs of its level ever being much higher than at present . . . The grazing is now good everywhere and our animals are doing well.
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