National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

²The reason Moorcroft did not find this channel is quite simple. In his anxiety
to miss nothing, he walked along the actual lake side of Mansarowar, and the
shingle bank over the effluent channel, beside which he was walking, effectually
concealed that channel from his view.² This suggestion reminds one very much of
Richard Strachey's saying that as Moorcroft ²walked along the edge of the lake, his
eye would have been so near the level of the water that a very small irregularity
of the beach might have concealed the course of the stream from his view².
To this I will remark that Moorcroft did not walk along the actual lake side
from Chiu-gompa to the point from which he returned. It is true that he went
down to the shore from the temple, but he had already crossed the bed of the
channel, which is the important point. Farther on he went along the top of the hills,
so much so, that he even complains of intense thirst.
In 1907 and 1908 there was not the slightest sign of any ²shingle bank
over the effluent channel². The hard bank Moorcroft speaks of lies some miles
farther south and is permanent, whether the lake be high or low. SHERRING says
that ²storms blowing from the east have thrown up sand at the mouth of the pas-
sage to a height of about 4 feet². ¹ This may have been the case at the time of
his visit (1905), but in 1907 there was no such wall. Eastern storms are rather
rare and as they come from over the lake, they are not likely to build up any sand
walls at such a place as this, which, as a rule, is exposed to the western storms,
by which the moving sand is blown out into the lake. But even if there had been
a sand wall of some feet in height in 1812, it could not possibly have hidden the
channel from Moorcroft's view. In 1907 one could lie down upon the ground
at the edge of the lake or at some distance from it, and, turning east, see the sur-
face of its water, and, turning west, see the beginning of the then dry channel.
But there was not even a rudiment of a beach of any kind, although some sand
had been swept by the winds into the bed of the channel.
In 1848 there was ²a raised beach² cut through by the effluent channel. Such
beaches seem, under certain conditions, to be formed by the breaking up of the ice
in the late spring. After an exceptionally cold winter, the still thick ice may be
broken up by hard winds occasionally blowing from the east, and then the pressure
of the ice will press up the mud of the lake on its edge and thus form a regular
wall round the N.W. bay, where the conditions for its formation are favourable, and
where the strand slowly rises and the lake is shallow. ²
But Moorcroft has not a word to say of any such wall near Chiu-gompa.
Even if there had been a raised beach in 1812, which is extremely unlikely, it ought
to have been pierced by the bed of the effluent, as it was at the time of Strachey's