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0270 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 / Page 270 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000234
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218 HEADWATERS OF YURUNG-KASH [CHAP. XIII.

not as favourable as on the day when I marched to Karanghutagh. Early in the afternoon for several days past I had noticed the same atmospheric change, a strong north wind rising and bringing clouds and a dust haze that soon covered the sky.

From the Boinak spur an easy path led down for some three miles to where the mouth of the Omsha Valley descending from the west face of Murtagh opens into the Yurung-kash gorge. The river, which we here crossed to the right bank, was about 50 yards broad, and nowhere deeper than 3 feet. Its water had a delightful bluish-green tint, and reminded me by its limpidity of the mountain streams of Kashmir and the Alps. I wondered how to account for this clearness of the water, seeing that the Yurung-kash must be fed very largely by the glacier water of the Murtagh and other peaks. Of the large volume of water which it carries down during the summer months, the broad strips of boulder-strewn ground were a plain indication.

On the 26th of October I woke again to a gloriously clear

morning, and soon forgot in the rays of the rising sun that it

had been 24° F. at 7 a.m. From Terek-aghzi, where I had

camped by the river-bank, a steep path led up to a long grassy

spur known as Zilan, jutting out from the mountain side northward. On reaching its top, after a climb of two and a half hours, I was rewarded by a splendid view of the glacier-girt Murtagh and the rugged snowy range southwards. Some four miles to the south-east the Yurung-kash gorge

completely   disappeared between the series of stupendous spurs

of rock which descend from the great peak on its left and the main range opposite. Looking up towards the mighty southern buttresses of " K.5," and the frowning ice-peaks showing their heads above them, it required almost an effort of imagination to believe that behind lay those Pamir-like uplands in which, as I knew from Captain Deasy's explorations, the Yurung-kash takes its rise. That there was no practicable route over the rock-walls through which the river