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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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very different thing, and henceforward we had it piercingly
cold. All the country between Rang-kul and Kara-kul is
barren in the extreme. Cold wind used to rush down the
valleys, and the night before we crossed the Kizil Jek Pass
the thermometer fell to eighteen degrees below zero Fahrenheit
—just fifty degrees of frost.
The Kizil Jek was quite an easy pass—merely a steep
rise up one valley, over a saddle, and down another. On the
northern side we found the country as inhospitable as it had
been on the southern, and on the day after crossing the pass
we encamped in a barren plain on the shores of the Great
Kara-kul. This is a fine lake more than a dozen miles in
length, and the day on which we reached it it presented a
magnificent spectacle. A terrific wind was blowing, lashing
the water into waves till the whole was a mass of foam. Heavy
snow-clouds were scudding across the scene, and through them,
beyond the tossing lake, could be seen dark rocky masses;
and high above all this turmoil below, appeared the majestic
Peak Kaufmann, twenty-three thousand feet in height.
I boiled my thermometer very carefully, to ascertain the
difference of level between the Rang-kul and this lake, and then
we turned off sharp to the eastward, to hurry down to the
warmer regions of Kashgar. Winter was fast coming on, and
we required little inducement to push rapidly on to the plains.
We crossed out of the basin of the Kara-kul by the Kara-art
Pass, fifteen thousand eight hundred feet. It is well known that
the lake has no exit. No water flows out from it. There
is very little indeed that flows into it, and it can well be kept
at its present level by evaporation only. But there are evident
signs all round the lake that in former times it reached a much
higher level than it does at present. On the other hand, the
Kara-art Pass may have been lower; for the neck which
forms the pass is composed of old moraine and débris, which
might have accumulated after the lake had fallen. There is a
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