LAKE KARA-KUL 
169 
volcanoes. Two springs gush out of the level ground. 
Late in the autumn, when the temperature permanently 
falls, the water which wells from them freezes. Meanwhile 
the springs continue to bubble up all the while the water 
continues to freeze. In this way two cones of ice are 
formed. One was 16^ feet high, and had a circumference 
of 225 feet; the other measured 26^ feet and 676 feet 
in height and circumference respectively. 
Four deep fissures radiated from the crater of the 
smaller volcano, which was about fifty-five yards distant 
from the other. At the time of our visit they were all 
half filled with ice. The cone was built up of an in- 
numerable number of thin layers of light green ice, each 
layer representing a separate freezing. The mouth of the 
crater was closed by white ice, full of air-bubbles ; but 
there was not at that time the least sign of water oozing 
out. It was an “extinct” volcano. 
The larger volcano consisted of a double cone, one 
superimposed upon the other. The bottom one, which 
was built up entirely of white ice, was low and flat, its 
sides inclining at an angle of not more than five degrees. 
The upper cone, which was a dome of pure, transparent 
ice, rising at an angle of thirty degrees, and measuring 
70 feet in diameter, was seamed throughout by a network 
of intersecting fissures, some concentric, others radiating 
from the centre outwards. Here again the mouth of the 
crater was frozen over, compelling the water to seek a 
new outlet through a side-fissure or “parasite” volcano. 
Although the water trickled out at a lively rate, it gradually 
froze before reaching the ice-lake, and so became set into 
a sort of “ice-flow.” Its temperature was 3i°5 Fahr. 
(-o°3C.). 
In the small ice-lakes it begins to freeze in the very 
beginning of November, and the last of the ice does not 
thaw and get down to Lake Kara-kul before the middle of 
June. In one of them it never does melt entirely away, 
being favoured by a shady, sheltered position ; so that, 
when the new ice beoins to form in the end of September, 
some of the old ice is still left. 
