| In the mountains above the glen in which we pitched Camp LV, at an altitude of 4838 m., there were arkharis. Down in the latitudinal valley, with its dry ground and absence of marshy tracts, marmots were abundant. The only place at which we saw hard rock in this valley was at the sharper angles at this camp, namely a hard, brittle variety, greatly weathered, of a light colour, and dipping 79° towards the N. 15° W. Everywhere else the rocks are covered with earth, as indeed we might naturally expect in an open, shallow latitudinal valley, which has served as a gathering-basin for the products of disintegration from every side. | | | |
| September 23rd. Still travelling west, we approached the southern shore of the lake at an acute angle, crossing as we did so over the greatly diversified lower slopes of the hills. These were composed of reddish yellow sand and earth, with a thin sprinkling of grass. Some of the deeply excavated watercourses were dry, others carried a little water, but in every case alike their bottoms were generally soft and marshy. All the glens open out in trumpet fashion upon the flat strip of shore. One of these was about 30o m. broad in its lowest part, and its bottom for almost its entire breadth was covered with a thin sheet of water, intermingled with red sand. It flowed in a peculiar rhythmical and pulsating manner, as though the springs which supplied it were gushing out intermittently. The cause of this was evidently I/td i n, Tourney in Central Asia. III. 20 | | | |
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