RECONNAISSANCE IN CENTRAL TURKESTAN. 
209 
during an unusually rainy time in August, 1903, it resembled a shallow pond 
frozen to the bottom and then flooded by a March thaw which covered the ice with 
water. The shores are composed of black, oozy mud, dip])ing under the water so 
gradually that it is impossible to say where the land ends. Close to the edge of the 
water begins a sheet of salt resembling rotten ice. At first it consists of a loose 
ma.ss of cubical cnstals of pure transparent salt, but farther out this becomes 
thicker and more solid. The natives say that in dr>- weather the whole lake is a 
mere sheet of salt on which one can walk, although with some danger of breaking 
through. In the latter event one finds pure salt as deep as to the knee and then 
half-liquid nuick. The salt is collected by the people and is carried as far as 
Kashgar. It is used just as it occurs, without cleansing. 
Fig. 145. — Shor Kul, looking south. 
A smooth plain about 40 miles long and 10 miles wide surrounds the lake. 
Much of it is so level that it forms a sort of swamp with a thick growth of tamarisks 
and tall sword-edged marsh-grass. The surface of the swamp is dr}', except in 
rainy weather, although in many places there is a bog below the dr\- surface cnist. 
The material of the plain is everywhere a fine silt of lacustrine origin and full of 
salt. Toward the edges, where the plain begins to rise, the swamji gradually gi\-es 
place to a desert. Still nearer to the mountains a deposit of rough gravel is 
encroaching on the fine lake deposit. The gravel is the front of a large number of 
broad, flat fans which drown the foot of the naked mountains and have converted 
some of the lower spurs into islands. Usually the ascent from the lake to the 
mountains across the belts of swamp, dt}' lake deposit, and gravel fonns a smooth 
