National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

THE VALLEY OF BURGUT-UYA.

Nc

65

into several arms, seemed to run into the lake, or at least into the marshes in its S. W. prolongation. From the next little tributary valley another brook went in the same direction. These brooks are not entirely easy to cross, as the ground around them is very swampy and treacherous. Such is also the case with the several springs we had passed on the slopes. To a certain degree the Kirgizes are right in saying that the lake is formed by springs.

Finally we turn to the north, crossing the valley and a brook from the northern mountains which reaches the south-western end of the lake in two branches. Just east of the second and at about 1 km. N. W. of the end of the lake, we camped.

From here one finds that the shores of Chakmaktin-kul are very low and flat and that the lake fills a good deal of the broad valley. Only on the S. W. shore are there some very flat undulations of the clay ground. From the background to the N. E. is the broad opening of the valley by which the uppermost Ak-su runs in the direction of Ak-lash. The mountains were snow-clad, the weather cold and windy. In the evening it rained.

There are discrepancies between the names I heard and those of the English map. Colonel BYSTRÖM has adopted the English version, as the surveyors from India travelled slower than I and had the best guides that could be found. For the distance from Bozaigombaz to the S.W. end of the lake, the English map has four valleys from the N.W., viz: Ak jilga, Ak-jilga, Achik-/ash and Burgutuycz. For the same valleys I heard the names: Ak-jilga, B rgut-uya, Ak-sai and Kul-kiir jilga, the last-mentioned being the one which runs in two branches into the lake and at which we camped. However, I accept the English version and call it Buggut-uya or »The Eagle's Nest». According to the English map this little river is of great interest for it effects a very remarkable bifurcation. At the point of issue from its mountain valley the river divides into three branches, the two eastern of which go to the lake, whereas the western and principal one turns to the S. W. and goes to the Panj. I saw only the two first-mentioned, as I came from the south. The route entered on the English map and obviously used by the surveyors, follows the N. W. side of the valley and therefore crosses all three branches. As the surveyors crossed the watercourses and saw them with their own eyes their statement must, of course, be correct. Colonel BYSTRÖM has drawn the hydrography on the map of my journey in accordance with this statement. Under such conditions the small swampy brooks which I crossed at the S. E. side of the valley, which came from the southern mountains and which I then supposed were running to the lake, were in reality either tributaries of the western branch of the Buggut-uya or ended in marshes at its left bank. This could not be made out from my route.

In his excellent work: Landeskundliche Forschungen im Pamir. Hamburg 1916, Dr. ARVED SCHULTZ has adopted the following view:I Am See Tschakmaktin-kull

I Op, cit., p. 80.

9. IX.