We travelled amongst small dunes to the S. S. • W. along the base of the hills which here and there are pierced by transverse valleys. In the mouths of some of them, the dunes were somewhat higher than on the floor of the valley. In the middle of the latter, two small isolated hills were seen. To the west the country is bordered by low hills. So far as may be seen, the Nagrong brook turns S. S. W. Whether it goes to a little lake to our right or continues to some other depression amongst or beyond the low western hills, could not be made out. Our route then turns S. S. E. and we cross a larger tributary from the eastern hills, in which there is some snow and drift sand. Very often the snow is buried under fresh sand, which one notices only when the pony sinks through. At the base of a third little detached hill were two sheepfolds and remains of camps. Beyond it, the ground of the plain consisted of gravel and soft sand with grass, but no dunes. Between the little lake or pool and the eastern hills, we made Canzp CCCLI, where the grass was good, dung of kyangs and snow in abundance. Here, Pan. 432A and B, Tab. 79, was sketched, showing the ridges to the west and N. W. across which the drift sand is brought by the wind.
On March 121h, the direction of the valley changes our route to E. S. E. We had 10.4 km. to Canzp CCCLII, where the height was 4,568 m. or 37 m. above the previous camp. The ground was thus again rising at a rate of only I :281. The little lake of Camp CCCLI is, therefore, the lowest part of the basin of the Nagrons valley. The minimum temperature of the night was —i4.0°. Already at 6 o'clock a. m. the wind was very strong, but the usual storm, with sand dust and darkness, began at 10.15 o'clock a. m. From Camp CCCLI, the little lake was seen to the N. 48-88° W., at a distance of about 1 km. It had no open water, nor could ice be seen, as it appeared brownish yellow, nor whether it was its naked bed or dust on the ice. No doubt it contains water in the summer. To the E. S. E., we now had a large open latitudinal valley with slightly undulated ground. It would have been impossible to tell in what direction the floor of this valley fell. But as the erosion furrow of Camp CCCLII seemed to turn eastwards, we probably crossed a very flat and imperceptible water-parting somewhere before this camp.
The hills on both sides are rather low. The southern are the higher and have a good deal of snow on their slopes. The soil consisted of hard, fine gravel with some grass. Some parts are barren. There is very little sand and no dunes. Traces of nomads were not seen until reaching the camp, where tents had been pitched. Large herds of kyangs grazed on the plains, one of them numbering 74 individuals. As a rule, we had found that kyangs were rare in the northern parts of Chan;'-tang during the winter and became more and more common in the parts we now had reached. The yaks were rarer here than farther north. The Pantholops antelopes had been seen in greater numbers in the northern regions and seemed to be quite
insensible to the cold.
IIIFカラー高解像度
