68 THE PULSE OF ASIA
from the winding shores of smiling blue bays, and then, at gentler angles, rise four or five thousand feet more to snow-capped peaks separated by glacier tongues. All is silent save for the cry of a waterfowl, or the lapping of the waves. The barren mountains, with their dull tints of gray, purple, red, and brown, stand in all the naked grandeur of the earth's solid crust of rock. There is no vegetation . or settlement worthy of mention, nothing to soften the severity of the clear-cut scenery into the gentler, milder beauty of more favored lands. Yet even so, the beauty of Pangong rivals that of the most famous lakes of Switzerland or Italy.
Elsewhere I have discussed at Iength some of the scientific problems connected with Pangong.' Here I shall only speak briefly of two, namely, the origin of the lake, and the climatic changes to which it bears record. I shall merely state the results of my investigations, without attempting to cite the evidence. Pangong is the lowest of a series of five lakes, lying at nearly the same altitude, and separated only by deltas two or three miles wide, like that at Interlaken in Switzerland. The five are really one, which has been divided into parts by the deposits of tributary streams. They occupy what appears to be part of an ancient winding river valley. The lakes and deltas together have a length of a hundred and five miles, a maximum breadth of four miles, and an average breadth of only two. The relation of length to breadth is about the same as that of the length of this page, from top to bottom, to the height of the larger letters in this line. In scenery and shape, and
1 Journal of Geology, vol. xiv, 1906, pp. 599-617.
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