322 
THROUGH ASIA 
had thought yesterday, and for a couple of hours we rode 
over a succession of broad ridges. Finally we reached a 
little moraine tarn, with green muddy water, into which 
flowed a many - branched babbling brook that came 
foaming down one of the outermost moraines, forming a 
delta of muddy sediment and ddbris at its foot, over 
which its arms again divided. 
This stream seemed to issue from one of the smaller 
glaciers ; but although its volume was as much as 70 or 
TOO cubic feet in the second, the tarn had no visible outlet, 
nor did it rise above a certain level, as the surplus water 
that issued from underneath the moraines flowed into the 
general glacier-basin. The tarn could not exist at all 
between moraine-walls of such coarse material were it not 
that the sedimentary matter which it brings down itself 
forms a sort of foundation for the water to rest upon. 
From the tarn we rode up in a southerly direction, 
between two gigantic moraine-walls. The trough between 
them was overgrown with sparse tufts of grass, wild 
rhubarb, and other plants, and was well named Gul- 
tcha-yeylau (the Pasture of the Wild Sheep) ; for here, 
and far out on the glacier, we found the tracks of wild 
sheep. 
As the moraines farther on became worse and worse, 
consisting exclusively of cyclopean blocks of naked rock, 
we left our yaks, and made our way on to the glacier 
on foot. After passing the last lateral moraine, which 
by-the-by was still in course of formation, we reached 
the firm ice. At first it was covered with gravel and 
boulders to such an extent that the clear ice -pyramids 
only peeped out at intervals. The lateral moraine, carried 
on the back of the glacier, was 500 yards in breadth, 
and ceased somewhat abruptly where the white ice began. 
This formed a chaos of pyramids and mounds, which, 
however, had no sharp edges, but were much rounded, 
and caked with a layer of soft, wet ice, chalky white and 
resembling snow. This was, of course, the result of 
ablation, or the destructive influence of the atmosphere and 
warmth upon the ice, which was then working everywhere 
