514 Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. [No. 5, 



on, and gives rise a little way below the obstruction to a stream as 

 large as that above it. In like manner I believe the Chomoriri lake 

 is relieved of its superfluous waters ; at all events a gentleman con- 

 nected with the G. T. Survey, whom I met near the mouth of the 

 Chomoriri valley, informed me that the stream I saw entering the 

 Para river at that spot came from the lake, and the following extracts 

 from Col. Cunningham's work I think incontestibly prove that some 

 outlet the lake must have. " On the 18th September I fixed a pole 

 in the water which I examined twice during the day and again early 

 the next morning ; but I find no perceptible difference between the 

 levels of the day and night, the extra quantity of water that is sup- 

 plied during the day must therefore he compensated by the greater 

 evaporation during the heat of the day. In the same month of the 

 year, Dr. Gerrard could not find any water-mark above five feet which 

 he consequently fixed as the limit of fluctuation, but I doubt if the 

 rise and fall of the lake amount to so much as one foot." Again, 

 " Towards the end of May or the beginning of June, the ice breaks 

 up and melts, and by the end of July the surface of the lake attains 

 its highest level, which from the water-marks that I saw cannot be 

 more than one foot above the tvinter leel." With this estimate I fully 

 concur, though Dr. Gerrard may have noticed rubbish and rejecta- 

 menta heaped by gales to leeward to a greater height. Now, if we 

 consider the manner in which streams descending from snow swell 

 during the day, several of which enter the lake, it amounts to demon- 

 stration that the lake must have an outlet of some sort, not to exhi- 

 bit a greater fluctuation than might almost be accounted for in a 

 large sheet of water by the mere force of a strong wind. Mere eva- 

 poration could never hold the balance so nicely or dispose of the vast 

 body of water the lake must receive from the surrounding country 

 which it drains, when the ice and snow melt over hundreds of square 

 miles and are precipitated into it. 



Col. Cunningham classes this lake with the others which consti- 

 tute the old lake system of Ladak, of which the existing lakes, large 

 and numerous as they are, form but mere remnants. Geographically 

 perhaps this view is true, but lake Chomoriri owes its existence to 

 very peculiar local causes, and the same climatal deficiency which 

 has dwarfed the other lakes of Ladak and converted some of them 

 from fresh water to salt, has paradoxically enough actually given rise 



