462 ACROSS TIBETAN PLATEAUS CH. XCTV
on steadily over this easy ground until we struck a huge alluvial fan of bare gravel streaked by small channels mostly dry.
It was the debouchure of a big side valley, at the head of which a number of glaciers showed, evidently fed by the eternal snows of the Yurung-kash watershed. After a twenty miles' march we halted by the side of a small hillock rising island-like above this vast delta of detritus. A gloriously clear evening revealed once more all the splendours of the great chain to the north. Above the big valley there rose a majestic ice-girt peak, 23,490 feet high, which by the look of its double cone and its position we could clearly identify as one already sighted by us from our ' hill station ' above Tar-kol. Glaciers of great size filled the heads of all the valleys here descending from the main range. The vista from our hillock was one of quasi-arctic grandeur, and the silent solitude all round heightened the impression of vastness. That we could not afford even a day's halt for triangulation caused a pang to both Lai Singh and myself.
On the morning of September i3th, when the minimum thermometer showed seventeen degrees Fahrenheit below freezing-point, a cloudy sky had effaced the more distant vision. Pursued by a succession of icy gales and showers of snow we crossed an almost imperceptible watershed towards a second large flood-bed draining the range north. Fitfully the sun broke through for short intervals, allowing us to sight again some fine snowy peaks already triangulated by us from the other side. We were moving over bare gravel wastes ; and it was curious how soon a spell of sunshine would produce in the rarefied air Fata Morgana visions of blue lakes and hillocks raised into the air. But the ground seemed to grow if anything more dismal. At last, after a march of over twenty miles, we came upon a small stream, and finding some hardy patches of grass could camp by its bank. The baggage animals straggled in with ominous slowness. The bitterly cold night added to their suffering, and next morning two donkeys being found quite unable to move had to be shot when we started.
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