billions of dust particles kept in suspension in the air and carried horizontally by the wind. When witnessing this procedure day by day from month to month and remembering that the same action has gone on since geological ages, one easily understands that the result can be but one, viz. the destruction of the relief of the whole country and the very far-gone denudation, the results of which meet our eyes everywhere, and which are so plainly visible on the long series of panoramas in my atlas. The student of physical geography who, in following my narrative day by day, has had the same patience as I had in performing the journey and sketching these panoramas in killing wind and bitter cold, will no doubt admit, that the panoramas give him a much clearer idea of the orographical morphology of Tibet than all the narratives of explorers put together. For no description in words can give so clear a conception of reality as a drawing or a photograph. But in this winter weather it was, as a rule, difficult to photograph, and, therefore, the panoramas and a few water colour sketches have to compensate a lack of the former.'
On March 6th, we marched i o km. S. E. and S. S. E., sinking only 41 m. or to 4,663 m., being at a rate of 1:244. In the night the temperature went down to —23.6°, and in the morning the air was absolutely clear and the sky as blue as turquoise. It should be noted that in spite of continual daily storms going on for weeks, the air after only one night's calm weather, becomes as clear and transparent as ever, allowing mountains at several days' distance to appear with perfectly sharp contour-lines and details. To a certain extent, this may depend upon the cold of the nights. After a severe storm in the region of Loj5-nor, on the contrary, fine dust is kept in suspension for many days, and the air, even if perfectly calm, is so thick, that it would be impossible to tell where the sun has her place. At 9.15 o'clock a. m. the S. W. storm broke out. The dust clouds had a gloomy brownish red colour. The wind gusts occasionally blew down with such violence and force as to dig out furrows in the ground, like ploughshares. Sometimes spirals are seen in the ground which can only have been dug out by cyclonic winds. Whether the shallow holes of two or three meters in diameter also are a work of the wind or of some other agency I could not tell. The kyangs seem to love them , for there was always much dung of these animals in the holes. It is of course possible that the dung is blown thither by the wind.
Leaving Camp CCCXL VI which was also a well-known camping ground of the nomads, we crossed three small ridges, not more than about 20 m. above the camp. To our left is a little pool only a few hundred meters in length. It was frozen all over and the ice was covered with wind-driven dust. The pool would, therefore, never have been noticed if we had not examined the place. Two other
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