MUS-TAGH-ATA 
215 
but close in beside the shore vve saw open water. It was 
pure, limpid, and sweet to the taste. At a short distance from 
the lake, I observed an old Chinese inscription engraved 
on a block of gneiss, that was deeply embedded in the 
ground and surrounded by a rough wall of stones. Close 
by were two other gneiss boulders, both bearing signs of 
having been subjected to the smoothing, polishing action 
of glacial ice. On one of them I just discerned traces of 
an inscription similar to that on the stone already men- 
tioned, but most of the lettering had been obliterated by 
the wind and its powerful ally, the drift-sand. The place 
where the stones were was called Tamga-tash or the Signet 
Stone. 
A low hill in the vicinity gave us a distant view of the 
Little Kara-kul, a beautiful Alpine lake embosomed in deep 
mountains, whose reflections played upon its surface, 
constantly changing its waters from blue to green and 
from green to blue. The ice was all gone, except for a 
small strip near the southern shore. A fresh breeze was 
blowing off the lake, ruffling its surface with foam-tipped 
waves, which chased one another in endless succession, 
and finally broke against the shore with a rhythmical and 
harmonious murmur. 
The path gradually approached closer to the lake, until 
it was only separated from it by a chain of low hills, the 
surviving remnant, as I discovered on a second visit, of an 
ancient moraine. That I should come back again to that 
lake, I little dreamed at the time I first saw it ; and yet 
I did come back, and its lovely shores grew dear to me ! 
How many a lonely evening did I not lie and listen to 
the mysterious tidings which those melodious wavelets 
whispered, and which there was none to interpret ! And 
how many a time did I not feast my eyes upon those giant 
mountains, which mirrored their snowy crests in the trans- 
parent waters of the lake of Little Kara-kul ! But I shall 
have occasion to relate my recollections of the place in a 
subsequent chapter, and therefore I hasten on with my 
journey. 
In some places the cliffs, along which the path ran, had 
