48 A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ORNITHOLOGY 
glaciers have their surfaces much waved and broken up: this 
is, I believe, due to their beds being very uneven, and thus pro- 
ducing a sort of ice cascade. To the left of our camp is a large 
ice-bed whose vertical section shows a number of difterently 
colored strata; something like the appearance presented by some © 
sand banks. This evening we actually Aeard the formation of 
moraines going on: the sounds of falling stones, which reached us 
every now and then, indicating that the glaciers were shedding 
their debris. There is hardly any vegetation in this region, with 
the exception of a few patches of grass and some small plants 
growing in the clefts of rocks; “the only birds noticed to-day, 
besides those mentioned yesterday, were some Hill Pigeons 
(C. rupicola) and of course, the friendly Tibetan Raven. 
A good many of our followers have suffered to-day from the 
rar Cfaction of the air, and some have had bleeding from the nose ; 
every one in camp feels very breathless after comparatively 
slight exertion. ‘The minimum temperature last night at Toti 
Yailak was 38°5 and here to-day at four o’clock in the afternoon 
the temperature in the shade was 40°°6. Very unsettled wea- 
ther today—occasional sunshine alternating with slight falls 
of snow—and very cold; steady fall of snow in the evening. 
10¢4.—A considerable amount of snow fell last night, “but 
to-day the weather has been clear and fine. Our task, ‘after 
leaving Sarthang this morning, was to cross the Sassér—a pass 
totally unlike any of the others which I have been over.  In- 
stead of being the lowest part of a ridge of mountains, the Sassér 
Pass seemed to me to be made up of a rather confused knot of 
glaciers and their moraines which had met at one point and 
jammed up against each other. The ascent was long and gra- 
dual over very rough ground; we skirted two glaciers, whose 
terminal cliffs looked like blue marble and each presented the 
curious appearance of a huge perpendicular face of ice dipping 
into a small deep lake. 
Thus far we had ridden on horseback, but beyond the 
second glacier we halted td breakfast, while the saddles were 
changed on to Yaks. Mounting the latter animals we then 
proceeded over some very rough ground to a huge glacier 
which stretched across our path. “Over. this elacier we had 
to cross, and we found that the snow which ‘had fallen last 
night made this—the most difficult part of the Pass—much 
less slippery than it otherwise would have been. A moraine on 
one side of the glacier was the highest point of the Pass and 
there I stopped to make the usual observations. The temper- 
ature at twelve o’clock was 31°°2 (minimum last night at 
Sarthang, 22°5), and the height of the Pass 17,724 feet; 
notw ithstanding the elevation I “did not suffer in the least from 
the rarefaction of the air. 
Ba 
