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0494 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 494 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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326 FROM SU-LO HO TO KAN-CHOU CH. r,XXIX

at desertion threatened again and again to leave us without transport, but luckily could be suppressed without frustrating our plans. Hence I need not record them in detail.

The heavy rain, which during the night changed into snow, did not allow us to resume the march until the afternoon of August i5th. But before this I had walked down the valley for a couple of miles and inspected a curious low transverse spur through which the river had

cut its way in a rift.   The precipitous cliffs showed
mighty seams of coal between strata of sandstone. Then, the clouds still hanging low on the mountain slopes, we made our way up the Pei-ta Ho along gently rising and very soppy ground until nightfall.

Next day we set out for the watershed to the southeast, where I knew we should strike the head-waters of the Ta-t'ung River, the northernmost large tributary of the Huang Ho. For nine miles we had to struggle across the plateau-like head of the Pei-ta Ho Valley, which proved an almost continuous bog and was most trying to the animals. Everywhere the ground showed small pools of clear water between more or less peaty strips of grassy soil. Had it not been for the hard layer of detritus underlying at a depth of about two feet, this ground would scarcely have been traversable. The water-logged upland plain ended with an abrupt edge above a deep-cut valley which sends its water eastwards to the Yellow. River.

Here, at an elevation of about 13,600 feet, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had touched at last the drainage area of the Pacific Ocean. There was something

inspiriting in the thought that quite close to this point, only hidden behind the rounded spur in which the Alexander III. Range dies away, lay the head-waters of the Su-lo Ho which once had made its way right down into the great Lop-nor depression. Thus on the easternmost slopes of the Shagolin-Namjil group, as the map shows, the drainage areas of the Pacific and the great Central-Asian basin practically touch.

Apart from this thought the outlook was far from encouraging. I could see that, in striking contrast to all the ground so far met south of the Richthofen Range, the