as we had finished the work- on hand and had placed the instruments securely on the yak, I set out on foot and .reached camp in the Kulan Urgi valley about ten o'clock in the evening. Dalbir Rai preferred to ride, and was much later. The exposure and privation had been too much for Dalbir Rai, and he became feverish' and very unwell. For a time I was deprived of his assistance, and in fact he. never did recover from the hardships of those days. In this (the third) crossing of the Kukalung Pass, the tube of the full length mercurial barometer was broken, but I had a spare one in which a few air bubbles had found entrance into the column of mercury. These could not be got rid of by shaking and tapping, but I was able to dispel them by carefully heating the tube over the camp fire.
As I became better acquainted with this region, my faith in the only map I had became weaker, and when I reached Issok Bulok Agzi in latitude 37° N. and found that I was still two days' march from the Yarkand River, my confidence in the map quite vanished.
In the neighbourhood of Fortash, I made unsuccessful efforts to find an accessible peak whence I might obtain a commanding view of the country we were about to traverse. We discovered an eminence which seemed suitable for a hill station, and one of • the men whom I had trained to the work, laboured at the erection of a pillar of stones, but the task was found to be impracticable. Returning to Issok Bulok Agzi, I began to take observations of moon culminating stars for longitude, but this work was stopped by bad weather, and, as the season of heavy snowfalls was about to commence, the only course open to me was to set out for the plains of Turkestan as speedily as possible.
From Issok Bulok Agzi to Tir, the largest village in the Kulan Urgi valley, and about five miles from its
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