CHAPTER LXXXVI. 
DISCOVERIES OF INSCRIBED STONES 
S EPTEMBER 27th. Stage to camp No. XXXV., 
seventeen miles. This clay promised to bring a 
welcome change in the monotony of our marches. We 
hoped to recross the Arka-tagh, and so say good-bye 
to the highlands of Northern Tibet, with their desolate 
lake-basins destitute of outflow. We knew as a fact, 
that there was a practicable pass somewhere immediately 
to the north of us ; for during our last rest-day I sent 
men to reconnoitre, and they brought back the report, 
that the road was easy. A couple of hours’ riding up 
a gently inclined valley brought us to the relatively low 
pass. Nor was its northern approach at all steeper. 
Taking as our guide a brook crusted with ice, we rode 
down a valley which gradually widened out into an amphi- 
theatre surrounded by mountain-crests. The brook also 
acted as a footbath for my men ; for they had constantly 
to leap across it, and in the wider parts sometimes failed 
to land on the other side. Their feet were encased in 
pieces of felt, wrapped over with khulan-skin, and upon 
reaching camp it was always their first concern to dry 
their “ shoes.” 
Having doubled a projecting promontory of the moun- 
tains, we came upon a very discouraging sight, namely 
a small lake into which all the brooks of the district 
poured their waters. Plainly we had only stumbled into 
yet another self-contained basin possessing no outflow. 
The pass we had just crossed was therefore in all probti- 
bility not the real pass over the Arka-tagh ; that still 
had to be surmounted, and possibly it would be a much 
more formidable affair. 
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