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0486 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 486 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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It was a great boon for us all that our farther progress
now lay for a time up the magnificently wide valley of the
Su-lo Ho, recalling a true Pamir and affording excellent
grazing. The next three marches, though relatively long,
were thus made easy for the animals. The expanse of the
valley, fully fourteen or fifteen miles across from the top lines
of the grassy slopes, was so wide that, by keeping near its
middle and utilizing the broad ends of the spurs which
descend from the Alexander III. Range, we could secure
splendid stations both for the survey work and for photo-
graphic panoramas (Fig. 241). In order to get a good
view also of the valley farther down to the north-west,
where it contracts just like that of the Pei-ta Ho, we
crossed and recrossed the river on the first day. It flowed
in numerous branches, none over thirty yards wide and
three feet in depth. Higher up, from the point where the
great valley changes its direction from south-east to east,
the river seemed to split up into a perfect network of
shallow channels.
Here at the end of the second day's march the rise in
level became so slight that the general aspect was more
that of a great upland basin than of a valley. Some miles
before reaching our camp of August 12th at an elevation
of close on 13,200 feet, I first sighted the group of great
glacier-capped peaks which flanks the head-waters basin
of the Su-lo Ho from the south. A long-stretched low ridge
separates it from the serried snowy peaks of the Suess
range, of which it otherwise forms the natural continuation.
The detached position of this eastern group of peaks,
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