cl. Lxi TERMINAL COURSE OF SU-LO HO 133
of Khara-nor and was unmistakably connected with it, and also by Ram Singh's discovery of a river flowing through the Toghrak-bulak bed. It became certain that the Toghrakbulak river was fed from the Khara-nor, and that the latter was not the terminal basin of the Su-lo Ho river, as had been assumed hitherto. But it still remained to determine whether the connection between those two lay, as I expected, through the series of minor lakes and marshes I
h had seen west of Khara-nor, or whether there was perhaps
n
a channel carrying the water of the Su-lo Ho direct from the latter down to Toghrak-bulak.
This question, too, was finally answered when on the morning of April 29th .I set out to track this connection. From our camp near the big magazine ruin we moved to the north-west, skirting the wide basin of reed-covered marsh and lagoons, until suddenly we came upon a narrow and deep - cut Nullah receiving the suspected outflow towards Toghrak-bulak. It was a regular river, over twenty-five yards broad, and flowing with a velocity of a little under one yard per second. In the middle the water was over six feet deep. Though drinkable, it tasted distinctly brackish from all the salt deposits which this spring flood was sweeping out of the lake beds. As I I followed this continuation of the Su-lo Ho for some distance downwards, I fully understood how easily the river could here escape discovery owing to the very deceptive way in which its course is masked by what looks an unbroken glacis of gravel. I must have approached it before at another point, to within a quarter of a mile or so without noticing its existence. Yet for the time boats could have passed along it with ease.
On the same day I shifted my camp back to the site of the ` Yü-mên ' fort, preliminary to a move for the exploration of the westernmost portion of the Limes, while Rai Ram Singh was sent eastwards for survey work about Kharanor. Then on April 3oth, by a forced march over twenty-eight miles, I brought my straggling column of camels and men right across to the point where the line of the wall as marked by its watch-towers was seen to bend round to the south-west. The heat and glare on the bare gravel
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