— 101 — 
The first, which is really a group, comprises 2 large and 
23 smaller springs, and, in earlier days, similar springs have 
been found above them in a higher level in at least two 
places. The openings can still be seen and there are lime 
deposits below them where the water must have flowed. 
The warm water gushes vertically up from the ground 
at no great speed, into a basin of at calcareous tuff, about 
1 mètre in diameter, with yellow sulphurous deposits around 
its edge. The temperature of the water when it gushes out 
of the ground is 78° C. That the temperature was high was 
indicated by the clouds of vapour seen arising, and from the 
quantities of small frogs, which lay, scalded to death, in the 
basin. Algae-crusts were seen in the basin and its outlet. 
Along the outlet a dense vegetation of Heleocharis palustris 
(subsp. eupalustris), stretched in a fresh green stripe from the 
hot regions all the way out to the marsh of the Alitshur 
River. Here, too, were many low, barren Phragmites communis, 
a very rare plant in Pamir’). 
The other hot-spring was far more interesting. It lies 
south of Jashil Kul, about 30 métres above the surface of 
the lake on an exposure sloping north. This one, too, had 
several sources, five in all. The water in the largest had a 
temperature of 32° C, the others 26°, 26°, 22° and 19° re- 
spectively. The last could hardly be called a source, but the 
water oozed up out of the ground in a circle about 1 mètre 
in diameter. These hot sulphurous streams soon united and 
flowed in a warm but quickly cooling brook down into the 
lake. 
From the opposite shore the crevice in which these 
springs are found appears like a fresh green stripe on the 
brown mountain-side. The vegetation is luxuriant with Scirpus 
compressus dominating. This plant covers the wettest parts 
of the ground, but does not seem to depend on the tempera- 
ture of the water for it was just as abundant in the vicinity 
of a cold spring. At the basins themselves and along the 
warmer courses Veronica oxycarpa and Epilobium thermo- 
') It is presumably introduced. In this neighbourhood is an ancient 
Chinese fort and a sepulchre, (Gumbas), for Abdullah Chan. 
