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0719 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 719 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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XCIII ASCENT IN YURUNG-KASH GORGE 451

rose wall-like to 2000 feet or more on either side of the Tüge-tash stream, and also lined the right bank of the Yurung-kash where we reached it at last (Fig. 329).

We were now quite close to the huge array of glaciers which cover the north face of the big watershed range towards the Tibetan uplands ; but at our elevation of about 14,000 feet we were too low down to get more than glimpses of their snouts protruding between the steep rocky buttresses of the range, 1500 feet higher. For about two miles above the Tüge-tash debouchure the wide rubble-strewn river bed offered easy progress, such as our poor donkeys badly needed after all their hard climbs and scrambles. Then a rugged promontory forced us to ford the river to the right bank. Fortunately it flowed now in two branches, about forty and twenty yards wide, and owing to the cloudy weather and the increasing cold which affected the glacier melting, its depth was nowhere over two feet. Once across we could follow our upward march by the river for a couple of miles over broad alluvial slopes deposited by the streams which came down from the glaciers above. In one place I observed the perfectly formed fan of an ancient terminal moraine, half a mile across, which the Yaghelik-sai glacier must have once pushed right down to the river.

That day's relative ease was a great boon for our patient donkeys ; for the most trying day's work on this trip was still before us. Setting out after another miserable night with rain and snow at intervals, we had scarcely moved for a mile and a half up the river when we were brought up by a big glacier stream at a point where the main river makes a sudden bend to the north-east. The stream carried the drainage from at least three huge glaciers we had clearly sighted from the Tar-kol peak, and its volume seemed but little inferior to that of the main river from the east. The vehemence of the tossing greyish mass of water was great as it rushed past between big boulders, and for over an hour we vainly searched for a safe crossing amidst the whirls and cataracts. Yet the day's ice melting had scarcely begun. At last, by posting groups of men near convenient boulders and by the use of