46 



SECOND YARKAND MISSION. 



The low worn down hills to the west were thickly strewed with round pieces of whitish or 



reddish compact limestone, intermingled with boulders, large and small, of fine-grained syenitic 



gneiss. This rock must be in situ somewhere near the head of the watershed. Further on 



were many greenstone boulders coming down from the west, and this rock must also be found 



in that direction. At last we descended into a narrow gorge, the sides of which for fully a mile 



consisted of a limestone conglomerate, the boulders of white, grey, or black limestone being 



well rounded and worn and cemented together by a stiff bright red clay. Upon this followed 



dolomitic limestone, rather indifferently bedded, massive and white, and this was overlain 



by bluish shales and well-bedded limestone, extending from about 6 miles north of Burtsi 



to the camp. These limestones appear to be triassie : they are compact, with layers full of 



small gasteropods, amongst which I recognised a Nerinea. The so-called Karakoram 



stones, i.e., corals, occur in dark shales below the limestones, which are capped by a 



yellowish-brown limestone, well bedded, but of unascertained age. The whole series dips 



south-west, at a moderate angle. [The last paragraph closes the diary, and is here repeated, as 



it is entirely geological.] 



