46 
SECOND YARKAND MISSION. 
The low worn down hills to the west were thickly strewed with round pieces of whitish or 
reddish compact limestone, intermingled with boulders, large and small, of fine-grained syenitic 
gneiss. This rock must he in situ somewhere near the head of the watershed. Further on 
were many greenstone boulders coming down from the west, and this rock must also he found 
in that direction. At last we descended into a narrow gorge, the sides of which for fully a mile 
consisted of a limestone conglomerate, the boulders of white, grey, or black limestone being 
well rounded and worn and cemented together by a stiff bright red clay. Upon this followed 
dolomitic limestone, rather indifferently bedded, massive and white, and this was overlain 
by bluish shales and well-bedded limestone, extending from about 6 miles north of Burtsi 
to the camp. These limestones appear to be triassic: they are compact, with layers full of 
small gasteropods, amongst which I recognised a Nerinea. The so-called Karakoram 
stones, i.e., corals, occur in dark shales below the limestones, which are capped by a 
yellowish-brown limestone, well bedded, but of unascertained age. The whole series dips 
south-west, at a moderate angle. [The last paragraph closes the diary, and is here repeated, as 
it is entirely geological.] 
