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| 0137 |
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 |
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CHAPTER IV
THE HEART OF ASIA
FROM the sharp ridge of the Sanju pass, at a height of
16,700 feet, the view to the north gave us our first sight
of the great Lop, or Tarim basin, in the very heart of Asia.
Near at hand, huge glaciers wound their ribbed way down
from the unnumbered nameless peaks, which they them-
selves, by cutting headward, had carved into sharp triangles
resembling the famous pyramid of the Matterhorn in the
Alps. Two or three thousand feet below us, at our very feet,
as it seemed, the steep amphitheatre of a huge cirque, or
corrie, formerly occupied by a glacier, ended in a broad
expanse of old moraines. Instead of the boulders and rough
hollows which one usually sees in moraines, these pre-
sented surprisingly soft outlines, for they had been deeply
buried in loess deposited from the atmosphere. The loess
was covered with thick grass, full, as we soon saw, of count-
less alpine flowers, and dotted with sleek flocks of sheep
and herds of cattle. Farther away the moraines contracted,
and finally came to an end where the stream which drained
them plunged into a deep gorge and was lost to view among
a maze of rough, naked mountains. The brown and gray
flanks of these lower heights sloped steeply, and some of
the ridges were sharp; but their nakedness, and the absence
of snow and of dominating peaks, made them comparatively
uninteresting. Our gaze went out far beyond them to where
the last low hills gave place to a strange yellow band. It
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