Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/73

54 cross two large and deep streams—the Koncheh and Inchikeh-daria—by swimming. Reference to the map will show how easily we might have kept along the right bank of the former without having to cross it twice unnecessarily. We could only suppose that they wished to exaggerate the difficulties of the route by obliging us to swim in frosty weather with the thermometer at 4° Fahr. at sunrise. The crossing of both these streams was satisfactorily accomplished, though the camels suffered seriously from their cold-water bath, and when our guides convinced themselves of the hopelessness of their attempts to thwart us, they set to work and constructed rafts and landing-stages at the crossings.

Before reaching Lake Lob we had to march due south and strike the valley of the Tarim at a point eighty-six versts distant from Korla. For some way the country has the appearance of an undulating plain covered with a pebbly or gravelly soil, and totally devoid of vegetation, forming a belt twenty to twenty-five versts wide, more or less, running parallel to and at the foot of the Kurugh-tagh, a low, waterless, and barren range forming the last arm of the Tian Shan in the direction of the Lob-nor desert. This range, as we are told, rises on the southern shore of Lake Bagarash, and after continuing for nearly two hundred versts to the east of Korla merges in the low clay or sand hillocks of the desert.