PHYSIOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS. 1 33 
IN THE ALAI VALLEY. 
With our field-glasses we had seen from Sari Tash the great glacier on Mount 
Kaufmaun and large grass-covered moraines extending nearly across the jjlain 
from all the principal valleys along the Trans-Alai range. 
The morainal masses extending transverse!}- across the Alai \'alley were each 
made up of at least two moraines belonging to two distinct, long-separated 
epochs. The old moraines are broad, smoothed-off lobes made up of large and small 
semiangular bowlders, usually of rather hard red limestone and mixed with finer 
till. Their surfaces sloped gently to the plain on each side, and no undrained 
depressions were seen. The whole was coated with loess usually 2 to 3 feet in 
thickness. The identification of this loess was at first a little doubtful, owing to 
the presence of thousands of mannot holes, most of which reached into the till below, 
thus bringing a quantity- of small stones to the surface, but it was well established 
in exposures on stream cuts. The streams now flowing from the side valle\-s have 
Fig. 95. — A Ketlle-hole Lake on the Moraine extending from the Kurumdi Mass transversely into the Alai V aliey. 
The Trans-AIai Mountains rising into the clouds. 
in some cases cut broad, flat-bottomed channels in these moraines and in other cases 
are deflected to one side, cutting a bluff. 
Lying on the middle of these old smoothed-off" moraines or in the channels 
there are long, narrower moraines of the second epoch. In topography the\' are 
made up of irreg^ilar chains of steep mounds with many large blocks on the surface 
and frequent kettle-hole lakes (fig. 95), and near their origins are cut by sharp 
V-shaped torrent valleys. They seem to be made up of essentially the same material 
as the old moraines. They also have loess on their surfaces and are grown over 
with grass, but, owing to their exceedingly irregular topography, their loess coat 
varies in thickness e\-en more than that on the old moraines. It did not seem 
practicable with the little time I had to attempt to get an a\'erage measurement, 
but there appeared to be much more loess on the old moraines than on the new ones. 
Of course this might be partly due to the more exposed position of the latter. 
There seemed to be a third series of moraines extending a short distance from the 
valley mouths, and in cases overriding those of the second epoch (fig. 96). Professor 
Pumpelly considered them to be of a third epoch. 
