100 KEPOUT— 1866. 



been on a line parallel with that of the mud-^•olcanoes and eruption of hj'dro- 

 carbon vapours and fluids. 



On the District of Lalce Pangong, in Tibet. Bi/ Capt. H. H. Godwin-Attsten, 

 F.G.S., F.R.G.S., Assistant in the Trigonometrical Survey of India. 



The author left Leh to survey the shores of Lake Paugoug in July 1863. North 

 of the Indus, from its junction with the Dras river, lies a high range of mountains, 

 which separates the Indus drainage from that of the Shayok or Nubra. The passes 

 over this range are of gi-eat elevation ; on the direct road from Leh to the Pangong 

 lake there are two, viz. the Chang La, 17,470 feet, and the Kay La, 18,250 feet 

 above the sea-level. Having crossed the Chang I^a to the village of Tankse, the 

 surveying party proceeded along the valley leading to the western extremity of the 

 lake. The stream which flows down the valley contains but little water. If the 

 waters of the Pangong (which have now no exit) should reach the altitude they 

 formerly attained, they would force a passage across this ban-ier. 



A Trigonometrical station of the Indian Survey lies close to the water's edge, 

 its height being 13,931 feet above the sea-level. The waters are of an intense blue 

 colour, clear as crystal, but too saline to be drinkable. The author commenced his 

 march along the southern shores on the 22nd of July. He pursued this route 

 until he came to a point where the lake contracts to very narrow dimensions : he 

 then crossed to the northern shore, and reached to within a short distance of Noh, 

 a Chinese to-vsTi of the province of Rudok, where he was compelled to turn back, 

 owing to the entreaties of the governor. Beyond, the lake again expands for a 

 long distance ; it then again narrows, and further east again expands into a fine 

 sheet of water, the termination of which is unknown. The first, or lower lake, is 

 40 miles in length, the second 33 miles, and the upper, or easterly portion, at 

 least 18 miles. 



Captain Godwin-Austen showed that the waters of this remarkable lake must 

 formerly have been fresh, and must have attained a much greater elevation than 

 they do at the present time. At present the waters are too salt to nourish a single 

 molluscous animal. The lower lake does not contain in its waters or on its banks 

 a vestige of any kind of plant, although formerlj^ there must have been a con- 

 siderable vegetation to sustain so much animal life. There are signs of the climate 

 of the region having been formerly much more humid than it is now. The absence 

 of streams whose waters find an exit in it is a curious feature ; but there are nume- 

 rous lateral valleys leading up towards the glaciers of the surrounding mountains, 

 and the bottoms of the valleys near the lalve are composed of beds of silt contain- 

 ing fossil shells, showing that considerable streams, bringing down detritus from 

 the mountains, must formerly have flowed down them. 



On the prohahle Lower Course of the Limpopo Kiver, Soutli-east Africa. 

 By Thomas Baines, F.B.G.S. 



Captain Comwallis Harris, who reached the sources of this river in 1836 and 

 1837, considered it identical with the Manice, or King George Eiver flowing into 

 Delagoa Bay. 



About this time the great emigration of Dutch-African farmers was going on from 

 the Cape Colony northward, and though they did not then take possession of the 

 country now knowni as the Transvaal, many of them penetrated the country of the 

 Limpopo, and defended themselves desperately against the attJicks of the savage 

 Matabili. 



In 1850 I visited the eoimtiy of the Transvaal emigrants with Mr. Joseph 

 Macabe, but their independence not having then been acknowledged by our govern- 

 ment, they prevented our passing to the interior, and fined my friend for having 

 published a short itineraiy in a frontier paper. 



From information supplied me by Macabe and several Dutch himters, I drew a 

 map of the upper Limpopo and its ti-ilnitaries, and a very intelligent German, 

 named Coqui, who had travelled from Origstadt, in the Transvaal, to Delagoa Bay, 

 di'ew me a sketch-map of his route, which I added to that I had already made. 



The " Oori or Krokodil Rivier," the main branch of the Limpopo, and the Lipel- 



