OVER THE ARKA-TAGH 
1009 
off on the left we passed another small round rocky pro- 
tuberance, standing quite isolated, and capped with tuff 
Then we became aware of a little lake, not more than a 
mile and a quarter long, but very irregular in outline, 
having a number of long narrow creeks running out in 
every direction. 1 his, the second depression destitute 
of an outlet, was the gathering-basin of all the streams 
in the immediate vicinity. From this I was led to 
infer, and as it subsequently proved to infer rightly, that 
the whole of the vast plain, which stretched between 
the Arka-tagh and the continuation of the Koko-shili 
Mountains, consisted of a series of similar small self- 
contained lake-basins, unprovided with any outflow to the 
ocean. 
We continued to advance in the same diiection until 
stopped by a long narrow gully, and to get round it we 
were forced to make a detour to the south, crossing on the 
way a brook which poured a large quantity of water into 
the crully. The surface now became more broken, a series 
of Softly rounded hills, troublesome to cross, stretching 
away towards the north-east. We could still see the 
glaciers of the Arka-tagh gleaming behind us and on our 
left; we seemed to increase the distance between our- 
selves and them only very, very slowly. The mountain- 
range on the .south had now vanished from sight, except 
when we were on the tops of the hills. The brooks 
flowed in divers directions, as though they were unable 
to make up their minds which way to go. There was 
very little rock visible, beyond black lines of slate wEere 
the laminae peeped up vertically out of the ground like 
grave-stones. To our agreeable surprise several times 
during the course of the day’s march we passed patches 
of scanty herbage, the thin kind of grass which the 
Taghliks call sarik or yeylak-sarik (yellow grass). 
Then we went over some hills, and crossed a brook 
flowing towards another lake in the east-north-east, and 
so came to a spacious valley with a river running down 
it. Here we saw grazing the first wild yak we met with, 
q'lig river formed a remarkably shaip loop to the east. 
