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0501 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 501 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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them. Its meat provided a much-needed feast for all our
Chinese party. So, in spite of drizzling rain which con-
tinued all the afternoon and evening, there was cheerful-
ness about the camp which we pitched on a thyme-scented
flat by the left river bank.
We were now on a well-marked track which people from
the Hsi-ning side used in going to the gold-pits which we
had seen about Ta-pen-ko. But I knew that we could not
possibly expect to find a passage right down the valley to
Kan-chou, owing to the confined nature of the river gorge
lower down. So I was eagerly scanning the crest of the
Richthofen Range rising above us for the pass over which
the route, first followed from Kan-chou by the Brothers
Grishmailo, and marked on the small-scale Russian Trans-
frontier map, was likely to cross the range. A low ridge
we had sighted from our camp suggested its approximate
position on the watershed, and when after proceeding four
miles down the river we found a narrow track branching
off towards it, I did not hesitate to ascend it.
We found that the pass, for which subsequent enquiry
among Mongols elicited the name of Shen-ling-tzŭ, led at
a height of close on 14,000 feet over the bog-covered
shoulder of a broad peak still partly covered with snow.
In spite of the low hanging clouds, there was a magnificent
view to the south and west extending over some fifty miles
of the Kan-chou River valley and the long snowy rampart
of the To-lai-shan beyond (Fig. 245). With a violent wind
sweeping the pass I just managed to bring away a photo-
graphic panorama before the rain came down. Over bare
detritus slopes we followed the incipient stream down for
some five miles, and then, seeing it disappear in a gorge
amidst very bold rocky peaks to the north, were warned to
look out for the track which turned off eastwards.
There we crossed a broad bog-covered saddle of the
type with which we had grown familiar, and enjoyed from
it a glorious vista over a succession of lofty side spurs of
the Richthofen Range, one rising above the other. The
sky had completely cleared when we descended into a
verdant flower-carpeted valley which recalled scenery of
the true Alps more than any I had seen since Kashmir