CHAPTER XCIII
TO THE YURUNG-KASH GLACIER-SOURCES
ON August 25th we set out by a very steep side valley to the south, and crossed the rugged spur between the Zailik and main Yurung-kash Valleys by a pass over 17,700 feet high, leading over what manifestly had once been old névé beds. From a ridge just above the Shalgan Dawan, as Pasa called it, we could obtain once again a glorious panorama (Fig. 321). Here, and in the narrow valley beyond, the decay of all rocks was most striking. We camped about a thousand feet below the pass, and next day had a most trying descent in a steep gorge choked with big boulders and manifestly scooped out by glacier action. Lower down, where the gorge widened somewhat, I noticed old moraines, though the range above now showed only scanty snow-beds. Before the gorge joined the Yurung-kash defile we were surprised by coming upon a patch of ground covered with brushwood. There were indications that the Zailik miners used once to repair here for the sake of burning charcoal.
The view presented by the Yurung-kash Valley, where we reached it at an elevation of a little over 13,000 feet, was singularly impressive in its desolation (Fig. 322). On both banks of the river, which here rolled its greyish-white glacier water in a bed some hundred yards wide, there was nothing to be seen but absolutely bare cliffs of red or yellow sandstone and detritus slopes below them. For over two miles our faint track wound along these dead slopes of rubble. Then it had to drop into the actual river bed to turn a huge projecting rock-wall, and behind it we suddenly
VOL. II 449 2 G
IIIFカラー高解像度
