218 AFTER WILD SHEEP IN THE ALTAI 



were now before us. The upper lake seemed to me 

 much larger than I had expected, according- to the 

 map, stretching westwards to what I thought was 

 over fifteen miles. With regard to these two lakes 

 I cannot do better than quote a passage from 

 Lieutenant Kozloff's observations. This well-known 

 explorer visited these regions the year after our 

 journey (1898) on his way to the Lob-Nor, and his 

 account, which was read at a meeting of the Russian 

 Geographical Society on November 22nd, tallies with 

 the notes I then took there : " My party came to the 

 spot where the Kobdo River forms two small lakes, 

 on the banks of which there are several Kirghiz 

 encampments. The lower Kobdo lake has an 

 irregular elongated form, stretching 10 miles from 

 east to west, with a width of about 5^ miles. There 

 are in it fifteen islands, of which some are from 2 to 

 2z> miles long. The upper lake is connected with 

 the lower by a rapid watercourse 420 feet wide. 

 The upper lake proved much larger than it was 

 supposed to be; its length is about 16% miles and 

 its width 4 miles; its depth attains 18 fathoms." 

 From the pass where we stood we could plainly 

 distinguish Lake Dain-Kol in the distance due south 

 of us, and on the opposite side of the two Kobdo 

 lakes ran the snowclad Muss-Taou ranee from north- 



