a handsome Bakhshish in cash had found compensation for the revolver he had previously coveted as a " keepsake," I had the satisfaction of seeing niy Indian mail arrive from Sarikol. It was a big one, and brought besides welcome letters and papers from home' and India eagerly expected little parcels, the result of orders I had sent to Lahore six weeks before from Gilgit, after thè first experience had shown
me the lacuna of my equipment. .
While the baggage marched on to Bulunkul I took the opportunity `of completing my photo-theodolite survey from an isolated hill rising due west of Karakul, and about 1,500 feet above it. The panoramic view I enjoyed from the height of Kok-tumshuk Hill was perfect. The lake at my feet glittered in the changing tints of emerald and chrysoprase. Just opposite on the eastern shore the telescope showed Ram Singh working from my former station on Karakir with the theodolite. To the north there lay peacefully the little tarns of Basikkul, deep green in colour, and in the soft clear light even the bleak old moraines around them, with their " cirques " and walls of rocky débris, looked less desolate and dreary. By 3 p.m. I had exposed the last plate and hurried down to where the limpid stream leaves Karakul. Then I marched along the eastern shore of the Lower Basikkul, and realised for the first time the charms of this pretty " eye of the sea " as it would be called in the Carpathians. Sleepy it looked on the quiet summer afternoon, and inviting for rustic repose the grassy strip on its eastern bank. But I had little time to spare for such pleasures, and soon had to tear myself away from this newly discovered attraction.
Beyond, vegetation soon diminished as I marched along the stony ` Dasht ' that forms the bottom of the valley further down. The river,: swelled by the great glacier stream known as Ekkibel-su, that joins it from the south-east, occupies a gradually broadening bed of rubble and boulders. I crossed it with some little difficulty about four miles below
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