National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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CHAPTER XV
TO THE NISSA GLACIERS
THE only route available for approach to the westernmost
head-waters of the Yurung-kash was the one I had first
followed on my expedition of 1900, but in the inverse
direction. So no detailed account need be given here of
the four long marches which took us from Langhru across
a succession of high transverse spurs and through barren
gorges to Nissa. Nothing had changed in the desolate
look of these curiously eroded rugged ranges and the
mighty strata of detritus and loess dust which cover their
higher slopes. But the narrow strips of vegetation at the
bottom of those gorges which push their heads close
enough to the snow-line to receive running water during
the summer months, looked greener now than I could have
expected from the impressions left by my autumn passage
six years before (Fig. 56). On the top of the first pass, the Ulughat, close on Io,000 feet above the sea, where an
exceptional chance of clear weather had then given a day
so profitable for our triangulation, I found the little mound of
loose earth and scrub we had heaped up as a ` station mark'
perfectly intact, a fresh proof how favourable the conditions
of this dry region are to the preservation of even the most
insignificant structures. The fame of the ` Pao-t'ai ' we
had built on the mountain-top had spread far and wide
among the scattered little settlements of Taghliks ; for
Ram Singh had heard it talked of even in the forlorn
valley of Pusha.
But if nothing had changed in the weirdly arid look of
these mountains, it was different with the atmospheric
conditions. Instead of the brilliantly clear sky which in
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