94 
EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
the axis of the basin, nins about parallel to the Alabuga on its north side for some 
50 miles west of its junction with the Narin. The trail crossed this anticline in 
the Uhi-tuz gorge, a few miles west of the new bridge over the Alabuga, and there 
we saw a section about 3 miles long, gi\en in fig. 59. Beds of salt and g}-psum 
occur in the center, and are greatly deformed. Bad-land clays lie horizontal on the 
north, and sandstones and clay-beds dip steep to the south on the south. The 
little stream in the gorge was intensely salt. Some miles farther east, beyond 
the transverse gorge through which the Makmal comes to the Alabuga, the anti- 
Fig. 60. — The Alabuga Valley, looking north. The east end of the Chaar Tash Range is seen over the 
dissected anticlinal ridge ot the Narin formation; gypseous efflorescence whitens the transverse gorge 
walls in the anticlinal ridge. Kirghiz Tombs in the foreground. 
cline has overturned dips on the south side and rises in a strong ridge, on which 
the g>'pseous efflorescence, seen in the distance, was at first mistaken for snow 
(fig. 60). Where we left the Narin basin on our wa)- to Son Kul, the border of 
the formation seemed to be determined by a fault, as suggested in fig. 61. 
A large part of the Narin fonnation, where we saw it, has been reduced to a 
peneplain along the larger streams since its deformation, and this peneplain is now 
trenched b\' terraced valle)-s, further considered below, with much bad-land dissec- 
tion of the clay beds in the residual uplands and on the valley sides. It was here 
that we saw that the bad-land forms were developed in sharpest detail on the 
southwestern slopes, while the closely adjacent slopes to the northeast had a thin 
cover of herbage and a smoother form, as noted in an earlier paragraph. 
