PASSES OF CONSIDERABLE ALTITUDE. 75
At 6 o'clock p. m. on the i 6th, a heavy northern wind blew up with snow. The next morning the snow-sheet had already disappeared in the dry air. Just east of the camp we crossed a little threshold perhaps only 3o m. high. From it a quite new landscape opened to the east, a plain surrounded by hills. It is covered with grass, and seven wild yaks were seen grazing. From the black mountains to the south several erosion furrows came down, directed to the north and N. N. E. We cross the plain diagonally and one after another of the erosion beds. One of them was unusually deep, having a rounded erosion terrace I o m. high at its left side; the right terrace was only 2 or 3 m. high. In the bed was a little brook and large ice-sheets. As we reached more elevated ground the grass became more and more sparse and was occasionally interrupted by barren patches. Protected by the erosion terraces, a good deal of snow was still lying in the beds. Over the flat face at the mouth of a valley a watercourse was spread in a real delta of diverging arms. It was a tiring task to cross all these erosion beds, which often are cut deeply into the soft, red hills. Finally we reached the principal valley, which no doubt came from a pass, though to the S. E. the country looked very level and comfortable. The watercourse of this valley was directed to the N. N. W. across the great plain where it probably joins all the small beds and furrows we had crossed. At Camp XLII water, grass, dung and yapkak were in abundance. At such places as this it was useless to sketch panoramas as the hills are too near and hide nearly everything around.
On October z 8th we made only 9.3 km. to the S. E. The first 5 took us to a little pass 5,357 m. high or a rise of II o m. from the last camp, 1. e. as i : 46. On the 4.3 km. downwards to Camp XLIII the ground fell 65 m. or as I : 66, for at Camp XLIII the height was 5,292 m. The continual enormous height that is so fatiguing for the loaded animals is the cause of the short marches. Half the number of the beasts of burden we had brought with us from Ladak had already succumbed, and still the state of my caravan was more favourable than that of the caravans of Wellby, Deasy and Rawling after the same lapse of time. The cause of this was again the luck we had had of finding a comparatively easy route into the interior of high Tibet, where we had found grass nearly everywhere. Only during the first marches, it is true, was the grass still green and soft. As
soon as the frost set in it became more and more hard and yellow. From that point of view it would have been better to travel at an earlier season. But the cold of the autumn is favourable from another point of view, viz., that the ground becomes hard enough to carry the weight of the animals. During the summer strongly denudated barren regions may be very difficult to pass as I often had experienced in eastern Tibet, and of which we had had an example N. E. of Chang-lung- yogma. Now the ground was frozen everywhere. On the night of the
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