of Rakas-tal.' He also says of Kailas and the Manasarovar: Both deserve a fuller description than I can possibly give, for we were only able to reach the lake once, and to examine the mountain from the road ...> He correctly says that the Tibetans usually call the lake >"Tso Rimpoché». Somewhat exaggerated is the statement that > within a radius of a few miles rise four of the greatest rivers of India — the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej, and the Ganges ...» To the sacred lake he gives 1 oo square miles and it »is nearly square in shape», which indeed may be said to be as true as to say it is round. For it keeps the medium between a square and a circle or ellipse. It is fed by numerous small streams from the »Mémo» and Kailas, but by no river of importance, although the Tage-tsangpo must be said to be of great importance and much greater than all the other rivers. The fact that the )'extremely salt » lake Gunchu-tso was frozen over from shore to shore to a depth of several inches, whereas the fresh-water lake Manasarovar had only i oo yards of ice round the edge, Rawling correctly explains by one of two alternatives: »either the lake (Manasarovar) is of excessive depth, or else it is fed by hot springs> . The depth is the principal cause, but there may be comparatively warm springs as well at the bottom of the lake. He regards the channel-problem as solved by the expedition, but has nothing new to say about it, except that the Rakas-tal »receives the surplus water of Manasarowar Lake, and is, as far as could be seen, devoid of islands The first statement was known already by the Lama surveyors, the second
is not correct, as there are some 3 islands in the southern part of the lake. On one of them I passed a very uncomfortable night in 1907.
Together with Ryder he visited the bed of the Satlej. -)Many have supposed that the Sutlej runs from this lake (Rakas-tal), and as Rakas-tal and Manasarowar are connected, it stands to reason that the Sutlej would actually originate in one of the streams that run into Manasarowar Lake.» Here Rawling touches upon the correct view, namely, that one of the feeders of Manasarovar must be regarded as the origin of the Satlej, but he did not keep to this view as he and Ryder did not find any signs of an outflow. He was told that there had been one 5o years ago, i. e. about 1854, when »the overflow took place annually,. Now they found thick incrustations of salt in the bed, which »would not have been the case had water flowed over it during the last few years. When five miles distant from the shore, we obtained from the sand-marks in the bed of the stream conclusive proof that the Sutlej
rises a few miles to the west of the lake This is not exactly the same view
as Ryder expressed, for he considered the source of the river to be situated in the hills north or south of the river bed. Both Rawling and Ryder later on abandoned their original views. Rawling says : 2 »Ryder, I consider, is correct in placing the present source in a branch flowing from the southern hills. But four
I The Great Plateau, Account of the Gartok Expedition 1904-1905, p. 247 et seq. 2 Geographical Journal, Vol. XXXIII, April 1909, p. 424.
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