70 EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
top of a fresh moraine at a height of over ii,ooo feet, near tlie end of a small 
glacier, and finding a mile of snow and nearly a thousand feet of ascent still before 
us. Our Kirghiz guides then .said they had known it would not be po.ssible for us 
to make the pass. We had asked tliem many questions the day before and they 
had promised to show us the trail. Their silence about the difficulty of the pass 
apparently resulted from a feeling of deference to foreign travelers. We returned 
to Sazanovka, sold our horses at about half purchase price, di.scharged our packer, 
and set out in post wagon (fig. 45), retracing the road along the lake through the 
afternoon and night of Juh- 24, descending northward through the Buam gorge of 
the Chu, between the Kungei Ala-tau and the Alexander ranges on July 25, crossing 
northeastward over the western branch of the Trans-Ili Ala-tau range in tlie night, 
following the piedmont plain eastward through the morning of Sunday, July 26, 
and reaching \'yernyi in the afternoon (altitude 2,400 feet). 
On Julv 27 we called on General Youof, governor of the province of Semi- 
ryetshensk, and on July 28 started for a ride of 1,000 versts northward across the 
steppes (fig. 48) in a tarentass, or springless post wagon (fig. 45). We made good 
time, stopping only to change hor.ses and for meals, and in spite of the loss of .seven 
hours from breaking one wheel and from binding another, reached Semipalatinsk, 
on the Irt\-sh, in the afternoon of August 2. The guest rooms in the post stations 
on the road were, with very few exceptions, clean and neatl\- furnished. Tea, 
bread, milk, and hone)' were among the chief articles of food to be had. At Semi- 
palatinsk we waited two days for a boat to go down the river, starting in the early 
morning of August 5, and reaching Omsk on August 7. The fast express on the 
Siberian railway carried us westward from Omsk at midnight, August 8. 
This joiirney furnished many entertaining incidents, some of which I have 
narrated elsewhere. It afforded continued opportunity for observations of geologic 
and physiographic interest, of which the most suggestive are here presented in 
classified rather than in narrative order, under such headings as mountains, glacial 
records, Tertiar)- basins, vallej-s with gorges and terraces, and lakes. The features 
of the mountains and the Tertiar}- basins do not bear directly on the work in hand. 
The other headings afford material of a kind that may, if sufficiently extended by 
further observation, suffice to determine a number of subdivisions of Quaternary 
time. On all these subjects, except the Tertiary basins, ]\Ir. Huntington's report 
on his journey south to Kashgar and west to Fergana in August and September 
contains important information supplementing that which was gathered while we 
were together through July. 
WE.'VTHER, CLIMATE, AND VEGETATION IN THE TIAN SHAN. 
The oppressive heat of the southern plains had already moderated at vSaiuar- 
kand and Tashkent. After leaving Andizhan the days were not uncomfortably 
warm, except for a few noon hours in the upper Narin Valley, and the nights 
were always cool or cold. Water froze near our tent at Son Kul on the night of 
