Geological researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, during the years 1862-1865.

CHINA, MONGOLIA, AND JAPAN. 29
growing in this gully, nor did we meet with any others either on the plateau or
in its valleys.
The lake is said to be drying up, and the Mongols say that its waters have flowed
into the T6 Hai farther west, an apparently unfounded belief, as there is no surface
communication between the two lakes, and the natives on the shores of the Te Hai
were not aware of any increase in its volume. Still it is evident that the waters of
the Kir Noor are rapidly disappearing, and the cause, whether this be only temporary or a constantly operating change in the climate, has been acting for at least
several years. Among the lakes we have already noticed, the Chaganoussu is also
disappearing, and the adjoining Hoyur Noor has for several years been represented
only by its dry bed.
The greater part of the plain of the Kir Noor valley is clothed with grass, and
supports large herds of sheep, but as we approach the recent lake-bed the surface is
eroded by dry, shallow water-courses, and is covered with tufts only of grass,
between which the ground is bare and cracked. This was apparently a marsh surrounding the lake of which, a little further west, the dry bed is visible covered with
the white soda efflorescence, and stretching several miles west, north, and south.'
The walls of this great valley, formed by the abrupt edge of the plateau, are
marked by a series of lines at different heights, and extending apparently horizontally, and on the same level, along the faces of both sides of the valley. They
are reproduced on an island-like hill that rises from the plain, and are visible at a
distance of from ten to twelve miles to the naked eye. They are defined, where the
slope is gentle, by a continuous mass of large and small fragments of rock, and on
the steep declivities by slight variation in the angle of slope.
I was able to examine these lines in only one locality, and there they appeared
to be independent of the structure of the plateau, and I can account for them only
on the supposition that they mark former water levels.
Following the road from Hoyurbaishin to the Te Hai we cross, at about the middle
of the valley, a small stream of fresh water flowing from the north, and which is seen
to empty into the remnant of the lake a mile or two south of the road. Still farther
west the road lies through a marshy tract. Two or three miles west of this we
reach a terrace of the lake-deposit, which descending rapidly from the western side
of the valley, faces the plain with a bluff. As the road ascends a ravine in this
terrace, the increasing proportion of fragments of granite and gneiss shows that we
are in the neighborhood of a rise in the granite foundation, while a few miles to the
north a ridge rising several hundred feet above the level of the plateau, seems to be
the source of the fragments in question.
As we leave the terrace and the valley of Kir Noor, we pass a deep and gloomy
gorge cut through the plateau to its very foundation. Where seen it is barely
separated by a low ridge from a valley that leads into the Kir Noor. This chasm
seems to lead to the Karaoussu, a tributary of the Tourgen Gol, which is an affluent
of the Yellow river. The valley by which we leave the plain leads us in a S. S. W.' For the results of an examination of the dried mud of the recent lake-bed, see Nos. 1 and 12 ill
Mr. A. M. Edwards' Letter, Appendix No. 3.