454 YURUNG-KASH GLACIER-SOURCES CH. XCIII
night in a narrow gorge cutting through the glacier-ground talus slope, and were glad to rest our weary and cold limbs by a camp fire.
Next morning, on September I st, we marched under a clear sunny sky to the north-east, and after less than four miles had the relief to find the ponies with my tent and much-needed supplies arrived from the Ulugh-köl depot, as previously arranged, under the guidance of one of Pasa's companions, and grazing at a grassy spot near the river's left bank. There we halted at an elevation of 15,600 feet, and let men and donkeys enjoy a day's much-needed repose in the sunshine. We had now reached the great elevated basin where the main feeders of the Yurung-kash meet, coming down from a perfect amphitheatre of glacier-girt peaks. It was very interesting ground geographically and geologically, with abundant evidence that the glaciers had in a relatively recent period extended over many square miles of what is now a huge rolling plateau covered with glacier mud and ice-carried boulders. I thought of my ancient sites in the desert, and how the recession of all these glacier feeders must have affected their fate.
On September and I climbed with Lal Singh an easy but well-isolated ridge to the north-west, which at its top, about i 7,400 feet above the sea, revealed the panorama reproduced in Plate xii. The view was gloriously clear and wide, and showed to the south and south-west an unbroken line of ice-clad peaks extending in direct distance to upwards of sixty miles. How delighted I was to greet once again all our newly won friends, familiar from our earlier ' stations,' bold snowy peaks with triangulated heights reaching up to over 23,000 feet, and glaciers no less imposing because they had no names ! The sight of the great mantle of ice enveloping the big spur just in front of us to the south was truly glorious. Its glaciers seen at a near distance formed a broad glittering rim to the big basin stretching away southward to the uppermost sources of the river. These could be located at an enormous glacier which was visible up to its head at some twenty miles' distance. But the snowy massif from
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