CHAPTER XXX. 
MOONLIGHT ON MUS-TAGH-ATA 
I HOPE I am not tiring the reader with these, perhaps, 
rather monotonous descriptions of glaciers ; but I have 
thought it proper to treat this subject somewhat exhaus- 
tively, as it is virgin soil, and every step I took was new. 
Only the Yam-bulak glacier had been visited before, viz. 
by Bogdanovitch, in 1889; but I made up my mind, I 
would not leave the mountain before I had mapped and 
examined them all. There are only two or three left, and 
those I will describe as briefly as possible. 
We set apart August 13th for an expedition to the 
Chum-kar-kashka glacier, riding thither up the side of the 
enormous lateral and terminal moraines of the Terghen- 
bulak glacier, and over very rugged country, covered 
sometimes with gravel, sometimes with sparse vegetation. 
A swelling of the ground, starting from the vicinity of the 
former glacier, dipped down into the Sarik-kol valley, 
where it was continued in the pass of Ullug-rabat. This 
serves as an important watershed, in that the glacier-waters 
from the Chum-kar-kashka glacier flow to the left, to the 
Little Kara-kul, while the streams from the ice-mantle 
farther south drain into the little lake of Gallchotock, and 
thence, southwards, to the Yarkand-daria. Beside the lake 
stood an aul of six yurts, subject to the begs of Tagharma. 
This glacier resembled the Kamper-kishlak glacier, and, 
like it, trended towards the right. The right lateral 
moraine was of relatively small size ; the left of tolerable 
dimensions. The tongue of the glacier was level and 
rounded, with no crevasses worth mentioning; the only 
fissures that seemed to be at all developed were those at 
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