CHAPTER XVII 



THE KARLIK TAGH 



On a clear day the view from Kumul is inspiring. South- 

 wards stretch the yellow deserts to the fabulous Lake 

 Toli, and still farther away to the gates of China Proper. 

 Across these runs the track connecting Sin-Kiang with 

 the home provinces. A desert-stage of eighteen days 

 would take the traveller to An-hsi-chow, on the farther 

 side of the Gobi, and two more would allow him to rest 

 his eyes on the Hoang Ho — the Yellow River. North- 

 wards rise the snow-ridges of the Barkul range, linking 

 up farther east with the Karlik Tagh, which culminates 

 in several fine summits. The mountains rise abruptly, 

 straight from the plain, superb in their setting of far- 

 flung Gobi, lifting their crests in triumph above the 

 haze and the dust of the low-lying deserts. 



It was early spring when we first sighted the Karlik 

 Tagh, the abundant snows that lay on the high, flat 

 summits and spread themselves out in smooth fields over 

 the plateaux lending an enchantment to the somewhat 

 barren plains of dust and stone that lay around. Here 

 the mountains end and the deserts begin, for at this 

 point the great Tian Shan mountain-system, after extend- 

 ing from west to east for close on sixteen hundred miles, 

 finds at last its limit. Dropping, as before described, 

 into a low, rounded plateau-country at the eastern end 



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