CII. LXXVII CROSSING OF LATERAL PASSES 307
observations showed, reached heights up to close on 19,000 feet. Here on their north slope the snow-line descended to about 15,000 feet. As soon as survey and photographic work was completed we hurried on to the next pass, the Li-yüan-ta-fan, only about one mile off. From it a steep descent of over a thousand feet brought us to the junction of two streams draining the main range.
The track thence turned up the valley to the southeast, which, in strange contrast to the luxuriant scrub and grass met before, showed nothing but bare slopes of detritus. On the higher parts of the spur which we had to surmount the snow still lay in large beds to within a thousand feet or so of the pass. The latter, a narrow rocky saddle, over 14,000 feet above sea, bore not without reason the designation of Hsi-ta-fan, ' the Snow Pass.' After the steep pull up its west slope, there was compensation in an easy descent on the other side, over delightful mountain meadows and then through a picturesque gorge of gneiss rock. Less than three miles from the pass we emerged in the valley of the Ma-so Ho, which was to open a passage for us through the main range.
From Ch'ing-shui-k'a-tzû, where we had camped on a small plateau carpeted with Alpine flowers and overlooking some abandoned gold-pits by the river (Fig. 233), we set out on August 3rd on a glorious morning. A short thunderstorm the evening before had cleared the atmosphere ; but with a minimum temperature falling to two degrees Fahrenheit below freezing-point and a heavy hoar-frost, it took time before the tents were sufficiently
dried for a start. The track up the river led for ten
miles almost throughout over gently sloping meadows ; but in order to keep to such easy ground we had to cross the stream half-a-dozen times.
As its depth was nowhere more than two feet, ' Dash ' alone felt the trouble, having each time to be caught and carried across on horseback. My little companion quite grasped that frequent swims of twenty or thirty yards in icy-cold water were not the right thing for him ; but after the long months of desert marching he had forgotten the art acquired in the mountains south of Khotan of jumping
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