GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEYS . AND EXPLORATIONS. 159 



history, antiquity, customs, manners, &c. of the people of High 

 Asia, and an account of the explorations of Lama IT. C, but 

 the author does not appear to have carried out this intention. Of the 

 Lama TJ. G.'s second journey no record appears to exist, though the 

 results of all the three journeys were embodied by Colonel Tanner in 

 the S.W. section of sheet 6 of the N.E. Transfrontier Series 

 of maps. Of the third journey a short account has been prepared 

 by Colonel T. H. Holdich.* One of the most interesting features 

 of this journey was the Lama's complete account and survey of the 

 famous Yam-dok-tso or Palti lake.f This lake first appeared on the 

 map prepared by D'Anville from the Lama survey, and published 

 by Du Halde in 1735. It was there shown as a ring-shaped lake, 

 and so represented on all later maps, but the explorer L., who 



travelled in Tibet in 1875 and 1876, and A k, who passed 



it on the 31st August 1878, both remarked that the so-called island 

 in the centre was in reality connected with the mainland. The true 

 name of the lake was reported by the Lama to be Yamdok or 

 scorpion lake, an appellation which shows that the Tibetans must 

 have had some maps, giving a fairly correct idea of its shape. 

 Villages and monasteries are clotted on the margin of the lake, which 

 is embosomed by mountains, except at its eastern extremity, where 

 there stretches a far-reaching plain of rich sward, on which graze 

 thousands of cattle, horses, and beasts of the chase. On the hilly 

 peninsula, which is encircled by the two scorpion claws, is an inner 

 lake about 24 miles in extent and 500 feet above the level of the 

 Yamdok lake, and on its shore is the great Samding monastery, 

 where S. C. D. was very nearly breathing his last.f The question 

 of an outlet to Lake Yamdok is still left in uncertainty, though the 

 probability is that its waters find an outlet down the Kong-chu into 

 the Sanpo. The Lama brought back a wonderful native story, that 

 occasionally the waters of the Sanpo rise and those of the lake sink, 

 so that the flow of the Eong-chu is then the other way. The altitudes, 

 however, make this an impossibility. The Lama then proceeded 

 southward by the Pho-mo-chang-thang-tso lake (16,050 feet), 

 respecting which he was the first traveller to bring back any infor- 

 mation, to the "Menda La pass (17,450) feet, which leads over the 



* Eeport on Explorations, &c. in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet. Dehra Dun, 1889. 



| A good deal of interesting information respecting the Palti lake will be found in 

 a note on page 244 of Mr. C. E. Markham's Tibet: Bogle and Manning (Triibner). 



X See page 116 of " Narrative of a Journey to Lhasa in 1881-82." Calcutta, 

 1885. 



