On 1 May it was already hot in the steppe by morning. Half-way to MaloAiaguz picket I saw the grave of Kozi-Korpech, made famous in the Kirgiz steppe by folk legends. Its top, unfortunately, had been demolished by a cannon ball. Who had felt such an act of vandalism necessary I could not discover. The steppe was enlivened here by newly appearing forms of vegetation. That day we had to cross boggy solontsy, alternating with sandy areas. On some of these salines we saw real salt encrustations of sodium chloride and Glauber's salt. On the sandy hills there were thickets of saksaul. The sands were populated with numerous tortoises and lizards, among which there were round-headed ones.

On 2 May we reached Arganat picket very early in the morning, this time in completely clear weather, and climbed the Arganat knoll, from which the view was very extensive. To the west in the slightly foggy distance there spread the shores of lake Balkhash, and to the east, partially covered with clouds, the snowy crest of the Semirechensk Alatau. I changed over to a horse and set out on an excursion across the low-lying Pri-Balkhash steppe. The Arganat group and surrounding steppe afforded me a very interesting collection of plants.

On our return to the Arganat picket Kosharov and I changed to my tarantas at two o'clock in the afternoon and quickly reached the river Lepsa, on the banks of which there were growing many shrubs: hawthorn, honeysuckle, and a species of willow. We crossed the Lepsa on a ferry. The weather became dull, and finally it started raining, but still before nightfall we reached the Baskan, another river of Semirech'e, and it was already night when we reached the Ak-sti, the third significant river, the fording of which was very difficult.

P 113 . . . On 12 May, having spent the night in Kuian-kuz, I made a fascinating journey from there up to the Ili picket, which took me the whole day, as I continually got down from my tarantas and walked almost all the way on foot, getting to know the new world of the flora and fauna of the Central Asian lowland.

The Pri-Ili plain resembled a blossoming garden in its luxuriant, spring attire. All the Ili arboreal barberry, which had been discovered for the first time by Alexander Schrenk, who was the first of the explorers to reach Lake Balkhash as long ago as the forties, and which was named Berbetis integerrima by Professor Bunge, was covered with large clusters of yellow, fragrant flowers. But the most interesting of all arboreal species on the Ili lowland turned out to be a hitherto unknown type of ash-tree, which formed whole small groves here in places; it was later (in 1868) described by Herder, a botanist at the Botanical Gardens, and was named by him Fraxinus potamophila n. sp. Besides this interesting tree, between 12 and 14 May in the Ili valley I managed to discover more than ten plants which were absolutely new and had not yet been described by anyone at that time . . .

No less than these hitherto unseen new forms of vegetation, among this original flora I was struck by a plant which was growing here in quicksand, in thickets of arboreal groves, which was striking by its tall and thick brown stem, devoid of leaves and furnished only with scales and penetrating vertically into the sandy soil. Moreover, the root of the plant, which is a direct continuation of the stem, has the same appearance as the stem. But the top of the stem ends with a long ear of thickly clustered purple flowers of a beautiful colour; at a great distance these flowers give off such a disgusting smell of carrion that the plant could be easily found in a forest thicket, but it was very difficult to dig it out from the soil due to the excessive depth of its root. This plant, which parasitizes on the roots of Nitraria, was discovered by me for the first time in Central Asia; however, it

turned out to belong to European-African flora of the Mediterranean basin, where it was already known to Linnaeus from the island of Malta and was named by him Cynomorium coccineum.

The fauna of the Pri-Ili plain was no less original than its flora. It was populated by a countless multitude of tortoises and various lizards; and also by a profusion of insects, chiefly coleoptera, crawling in damp, sandy, clayey places: a great many arachnids were encountered here too: karakurt, scorpions and phalangids. Among the coleoptera I found here for the first time a beautiful, smooth, metallic-coloured species of carabus of the genus Calosoma (species Callisthenus).

Only by the evening of 12 May, after these memorable excursions, I arrived at

Iliisk, where I found our Russian settlement had already been completely built up with excellent timber, after its preliminary and gradual drying out in the forest zone of the Zailiiskii Alatau. I stayed the night in Iliisk so as to make one more interesting excursion in the Ili valley the next day, accompanied by Kosharov, the artist, for forty versts down the river Ili.

On the day of that excursion, 13 May, the weather was absolutely favourable, and it was already 10 degrees C when we set out on our journey at five o'clock in the morning.

In Iliisk the majestic river, which is 400 metres wide, still flows between low sandy banks across the plain, the absolute height of which does not exceed 340 metres, but which slowly rises to the south towards Vernyi, which is seventy versts away from Iliisk, gradually passing into the foothills of the Zailiiskii Alatau. The river Ili itself flows by Iliisk straight from east to west, and already seven versts below Iliisk its channel begins to cut into a rocky bed. Thus the full and fast-flowing river sinks deeper and deeper into a hollow, which it has scoured for itself between the crags. In consequence of this, following along the course of the Ili, we found ourselves fifteen or twenty versts below Iliisk in a rocky, although very wide, gorge. Here the majestic river flowed between huge, cliff-like banks, which became higher and higher, but left a free passage between their precipices and the river-bed. About twenty or twenty-five versts below Iliisk the cliffs, rising more than a hundred metres above the level of the river and consisting of light red porphyry, become very picturesque, especially where they come close to the lucid, emerald-green, wide surface of the river. Numerous flocks of white pelicans were swimming in it and flying above it. I noticed a curious and very cleverly organized discipline in the movements of the flocks of these huge birds. Obviously, each flock had at its front experienced and careful look-out birds, in conformity with the movements and signals of which the whole flock moved, both in the water and in the air.

The main objective of our excursion down the Ili was Tamgaly-tash ('inscribed rocks'), an isolated terrain feature, which was at a distance of thirty to thirty-five versts downstream from Iliisk. Indeed, in the wide gorge, through which the river forced its way here, on a high cliff we found the huge characters of a Tibetan inscription, which I copied as best I could, with the help of artist Kosharov. This inscription turned out to be not particularly ancient. It was apparently carved in the middle of the eighteenth century at the time of the Dzhungarian empire, when there were temporary camps of Khan Amursani here, and had the purpose of designating the western boundaries of Dzhungaria.

By the evening we returned to lliisk, where we again spent the night, having covered no less than seventy versts there and back that day.

P 124: (the second journey into the mountains) . . . In the second half of May on the mountain slopes nearest to Vernyi, there were still in flower early spring Asiatic forms, among which there was the strikingly beautiful plant with a tall stem up to three metres high, covered with pink flowers, that I have already mentioned. It belonged to the species Eremurus of the

Liliaceae family and later received the name Eremurus (Henningia) robustus. Already from the very entrance into the valley there appeared typical shrubs of the lower forest zone: flowering barberry (Berberis heteropoda) and hawthorn (Crataegus sp.), Atraphaxisfrutescens covered with pink flowers, and of herbaceous plants the beautiful peony (Paeonia anomala) and striking rhubarb (Rheum rhaponticum).

As we went deeper into the Almatinka valley, we wandered about a fascinating forest, which consisted of wild apple-trees and apricot-trees, covered with delicate pale pink blossom, and also of a species of maple, newly discovered by me, which was very similar to the Himalayan and Amur species, and which later received my name (Acersemenowi).

Going higher up the valley, we came into a zone of coniferous, pine forest, from which the inhabitants of Vernyi extracted their timber. At the onset of the forest zone I made a hypsometric measurement, which showed 1,370 metres of absolute altitude. Going still higher up the valley, after about three hours' journey we reached the upper limit of forest vegetation, which turned out to be at 2,540 metres according to my measurement. Here the zone of alpine meadows had already begun.

Returning to Vernyi, on 23 May I made there one more hypsometric measurement, which showed 720 metres of absolute height.

By the end of May the camels were hired, and my expedition was finally equipped. On 29 May I left Vernyi at two o'clock in the afternoon with my whole detachment, which consisted of fifty-eight men, twelve camels and seventy horses. I travelled for twelve versts to a mountain spur, which stuck out into the Ili foothills like a promontory. Near the promontory at the small river Katurbulak I came across many boulders of porphyry. Having travelled five versts from there, we crossed the river Bei-bulak, and after a further seven versts reached the beautiful river Talgar; we crossed it, travelled another four versts and stopped for the night at the foot of a second spur, which jutted out into the foothills.

Before it got dark, the artist Kosharov and I climbed up the top of this spur, and at sunset enjoyed a fascinating view of the snowy mountain group, which aftertalgar peak (Taigarnyn-tal-choku), seems to be the highest in the Zailiiskii Alatau. The sunlight, which had already set behind the other summits, was still flickering with its reddish brilliance on the pointed peak and the snow-white slopes descending from it. The Taigar peak itself was not visible behind this gigantic group of belki. When I was coming down a steep broad gully, I came across the den of a large wild animal, probably a bear.

The banks of the Talgar's tributary, by which we stopped for the night, were covered with meadow-sweet. That day I was able to find a plant, unknown to anyone yet, of the genus Silene; it was later called after me, Silene semenotvi n. sp. The following interesting plants, already familiar to me, were collected at Talgar: Papaver dubium, Hesperis matronalis, Erysimum cheiranthoides, Isatis tinctoria, Peganum harmala, Trigonella orthoceras, Sorbus tianshanica n. sp., Viburnum opulus, Valeriana officinalis, Filago arvensis, Dracocephalum integrifolium, Polygonum nodosum, Tulipa altaica, Eremurus altaicus and E. robustus. Since the collection was carried out without leaving the cultivated zone, a significant percentage of the plants of the Talgar flora turned out to be common with the species of Europe. I did not encounter outcrops of solid rocks here. The foothills had argillaceous sandy soil and were rich in granite boulders. In the evening Colonel Peremyshl'skii and I agreed that the next day, having left my detachment, I would go on a mountain excursion for the whole day exploring the alpine Lake Dzhasyl-kul', Peremyshl'skii would go to the Kirgiz auly, and my detachment would move on to the next overnight stop at the river Issyk, and there we would meet the pristav in order to proceed together on 2 June to the gathering of the Kirgiz of the Great Horde.

On 30 May at nine o'clock in the morning the temperature was 14.3 degrees C. I made arrangements for my detachment's move to the next camp at the place where the river Issyk came out to the foothills, and accompanied by the artist Kosharov, six Cossacks and two Kirgiz guides I made for the mountains to explore the alpine Lake Dzhasyl-kul'.

We left our camp at six o'clock in the morning, making for the south at first, and then towards the east so as to cross the mountain spur, by which we had spent the night. We climbed along the rivulet which was flowing across the foothill valley. At the very beginning of our ascent Talgar peak could be seen clearly; it looked like Mont Blanc from here, but was even more picturesque and majestic. The valley up which we were going belonged by now to the forest zone and displayed a splendid profusion of apple-trees and apricot-trees, Tian'-Shan' rowan, hawthorn, Zailiiskii maple, cherganak, aspen, willow, honeysuckle and Atraphaxis spinosa. Among herbaceous plants the following local flora were entered into my diary that day: Aconitum palliduin, Paeonia anomala, Cardamine impatiens, Scabiosa caucasica, Erysimum cheiranthoides, Dictamnus albus, Valeriana officinalis, Rheum rhaponticum and characteristic for local spring flora the bulbous plants Fritillatia pallidiflora and Eremurui altaicus. All these plants represented the typical lower forest zone.

The valley was like a luxuriant garden, populated at this time of year by the motley, smartly-attired migrants of the Dzhasik clan from the Dulat tribe of the

Great Kirgiz Horde. We stopped for a quarter of an hour and drank airan with them, and then their biy greeted us on the road with kumys. The valley was rising quite steeply, but soon we came out on to a gently sloping spur, which was cut through by a ravine; here we entered the spruce forest and came across the first outcrop of crystalline rocks, namely porphyry. At the spur we crossed the river Tal-bulak and from there began began to go rapidly uphill. The mountain ridge which we were climbing was a spur of the main crest. Before us there rose a cupola-shaped porphyry knoll, entirely covered with spruce forest. Avoiding too steep an ascent, we began to skirt it, going up a steep gully, at the bottom of which unmelted snow could be seen here and there. The ascent was difficult.

The trees which featured in the middle orchard belt of the forest zone were rapidly disappearing in the following order: first, apricot-trees, then the apple, rowan, Zailiiskii maple, aspen, willow, and finally there remained only coniferous trees - spruce and archa junipers, and after them among the herbaceous vegetation there appeared typical representatives of the mountain alpine flora. Under the thawing snows I was delighted to see the earliest spring flowers of our Russian Sarmatian plain: pale yellow flowers of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara).

Having at last climbed the ridge which adjoined the cupola-shaped knoll, and having travelled a little along its western slope, we saw with delight at our feet I the Green Lake' (Dzhasyl-kul'), which had the purest and the most transparent, rich bluish-green colour of trans-Baikal beryl. Beyond the lake there arose the bold and steep jagged crest of a high belok, and a little further to the right there unfolded a view of an even higher snow-capped mountain, which had the appearance of a dazzling white tent: our guide called this mountain Issyk-bash. Still further to the right, towards the south-west of the lake were visible the sharp peaks of a serrated granite crest, the slopes of which were also covered with snow, but only separate strips and patches of this snow remained by the end of the summer. Beside these peaks, which screened the view of Taigar peak, still slightly further to the right and closer to it there arose the cupola-shaped knoll, which was rockier on one side. We were here about 300 metres directly above the lake and were travelling along the crest to the south-west. Having crossed several of its undulations and ascending sharply, we reached the boundary of the forest.

Dwarfish and gnarled trees were soon replaced by shrubs, among which archa and a small species of honeysuckle predominated. The herbaceous flora were now high alpine. Here I made a hypsometric measurement, which showed 2,500 metres of absolute altitude for the boundary of forest vegetation.

From here, leaving our horses with the three Cossacks, I began my ascent to the cupola-shaped knoll on foot. Our ascent was very difficult especially as halfway up we were shrouded in thick cloud and deafened by peals of thunder. But when at last we emerged from the thundercloud and reached the top of the knoll, the clouds all dispersed and the sun shone with all its brilliance. Only at our feet, above 'the Green lake', there were still black clouds, cloven by the brilliant lightning, while loud peals of thunder were repeated across the adjoining mountains. This magical spectacle of the mountain giants, lit up by the sun against a background of the cloudless sky above and of black lightning-streaked clouds above the 'Green Lake' beneath, will never be blotted out of my memory. At the very top of the knoll I made a hypsometric measurement, which gave 2,950 metres of absolute altitude. The temperature of the air between one and two o'clock in the afternoon was 8'C, with a fresh south-west wind. All of the northern side of our knoll was covered with masses of snow, partly newly-fallen.

During our rather long halt the clouds above the take dispersed completely, and the entire landscape was revealed in its full brilliance. Dzhasyl-kul' was visible from this enormous height, just like Lake Brienz from the slopes of the Faulhorn; only from the right side of the knoll, which I had measured, and which our Kirgiz guides called Kyz-imchek (Virgin's breast), the view of it was limited. A high wall of needles hid Talgar peak from us to a certain extent, and despite its steepness, was enveloped in a snow cover, from which protruded black teeth and needles, similar to the Aiguilles du Midi in the Mont Blanc group, and absolutely inaccessible.

The Kyz-imchek knoll, on which we were standing, was the last and highest of the porphyry mountains, and further on from the beginning of the needles there were the granites, of which Issyk-bash and Taigar peak consisted. The needles appeared to me to be 500 metres higher than the Kyz-imchek knoll.

We were sorry to leave one of the most attractive landscapes in the Zailiiskii Alatau as we started descending to 'the Green Lake'. By approximately five

o'clock we reached our horses and, having mounted them, traversed the ridge, coming down it into the pine forest zone, and then entered the valley of a tributary of the Issyk, which was covered with woodland vegetation of the orchard sub-zone. On our way down we came across numerous auly of the Kirgiz and at seven o'clock in the evening we came out to the river Issyk, at which we found our whole detachment a little below the ruins of the first Russian winter camp of 1855. Here at half past seven in the evening the thermometer showed 15 degrees C.

P 134 (a Kirghiz yurt) . . . It was raining during the night of 1 June at Tal-bulak, and the morning was overcast. We left no earlier than seven o'clock in the morning and in a few hours reached the auly of Ables.

The iurta which was erected for us consisted of felt, beautifully embroidered with braid and was sumptuously decorated with Bukharan carpets. But I was much more interested in Ables's permanently inhabited iurta, into which we were invited for refreshments, and where I could familiarize myself with all the household articles of wealthy Kirgiz of the Great Horde, and with hand-made articles, for example, their snow-white felts of camel's hair, embroidered with coloured cords and trimmed with a wide variegated ribbon, and also beautiful multicoloured felt carpets, sewn together like a mosaic of coloured felts, and so on. We could justifiably wonder at both the spaciousness and comfort of this living iurta, and at the richness of its decor with high quality Bukharan, Kashgar and Turkmen carpets,' and at the diversity of the household articles, partly of Oriental, partly of Russian manufacture, arranged on the carpet bales along the walls of the iurta. Among these articles there were Chinese porcelain tea-cups and Russian glasses and small saucers, Russian knives and forks, silver spoons, beautifully shaped Bukharan copper kumgany (wash-hand-stands and wash-tubs), Russian wooden platters, large bowls which substituted for dishes, and numerous Russian caskets and boxes. On one side of the iurta there was a divan-bed, covered with rich quilts, made of motley silk materials in mosaic pattern. Beautifully embroidered with many-coloured silks, cloth napkins covered the carpet bales, which were beautifully tied together with home-made cords and arranged along the walls.

In front of the divan-bed on the carpet Ables's wife was sitting, dressed in a rich Chinese robe (khalat). On her head was a white, picturesquely folded headdress. But when Sultan Ali came into the iurta, a rich silk curtain came down in front of the part of the iurta where Ables's wife was sitting and hid her, as she was not supposed to show herself before her father-in-law.

The meal began. At first kumys was served, then tea in Chinese cups with sugar, raisins, dried peaches and apricots, wheaten rusks made with butter, and Tashkent sweets. Then the feast continued with a very tasty pilau made with sheep's-tail dripping, mutton, raisins and onions. Ables's little son came out and his two little sisters appeared for a moment; the latter were dressed in little silk oriental robes and Kirgiz sharovary [wide trousers], with fur hats on their heads.

After that we returned to our iurta, where we were escorted by Ables; he was richly dressed in a khalat, embroidered with gold, and wore a conical velvet hat, also embroidered with gold and trimmed with sable. Here more food was served, consisting of mutton and horse-meat.

The Heart of the Tian'-Shan'

P 147 . . . On 9 June, with indescribable delight, I set out at last with my whole detachment on my first journey into the heart of the Tian'-Shan', which had already faced me for a long time. My detachment consisted of forty-nine Cossacks; one of the Cossacks fell ill and I left him behind in the care of the Bogintsy together with my serf servant, who was also taken ill, either in reality or pretending. Over and above the Cossacks, my detachment comprised twelve Karakirgiz guides and camel-drivers, given to us by Burambai, and my faithful fellow-traveller, the estimable artist Kosharov. One of the Cossacks was permanently attached to me in the capacity of interpreter, as he had a superb command of the Kirgiz languages. In our detachment, besides sixty-three good Karakirgiz saddle-horses which we rode, we had also twelve camels.

Our whole caravan very quickly left Burambai's auly for the nearby Santash mountain pass, over the watershed between the Ili and Issyk-kul' basins. Santash rose only slightly above Burambai's nomad camps and received its name from a pile of stones ('Santash' means 'a thousand stones') heaped on the shore of a small lake.

From Santash, after covering no more than five versts, we came out to the basin of Lake Issyk-kul' at the top of its western tributary, the river Tiup. On the bank of this river that day (9 June) I managed to find a completely new Compositae plant of the Tanacetum family, later described by the botanist Herder under the name of Tanacetum semenovi.

In order to get from the Tiup into the valley of the river Dzhargalan, flowing parallel to it, but more to the south into Issyk-kul' and already familiar to me from my journey of 1856, I crossed the wide valley of the Tiup diagonally and started climbing the low mountain ridge of Kyzyl-kii, which separated the two valleys, and which was covered with spruce forest in its upper part, where it already joined the Tian'-Shan'.

From the pass a magnificent view unfolded of the frontal chain of the Tian'-Shan', to which the mountains of Kyzyl-kii belonged. Having come down fmm the foot of this mountain into the valley of the Dzhargalan, which emerged heft from the gorges of the Tian'-Shan', I could see from here the entire longitudi1w valley of the Dzhargalan and the discharge into it of the river Turgen'-ak-su, issuing from the Tian'-Shan' gorges, and also the whole main chain ofthe Heavenly Ridge (Tian'-Shan'), shining with its everlasting snows, which the Kirgiz called Mus-tag (The Snowy Mountains).

Although the longitudinal valley of the Dzhargalan, yielding little in its altitude to the height of Santash, was already in the zone of coniferous forest, there was so little woodland that the local flora was entirely like that of the agricultural zone of the Trans-Ili territory, where Vernyi and all the Russian settlements of the Trans-Ili foothill region were situated.

It was this that later made it possible for a Russian colony to settle firmly in the Issyk-kul' basin and to establish here by the river Karakol a flourishing urban settlement which later received the name of Przheval'sk from Przheval'skii's grave, situated near it.

Having come down from the Kyzyl-kii into the Dzhargalan valley, we began to encounter whole crowds of Bogintsy, who were trudging on foot from Sarybagish captivity, as they had been abandoned by the Sarybagish who quickly vacated the lands conquered by them at Issyk-kul' before our arrival. The captives were dragging themselves along, hungry, emaciated and half-clothed, so that we had to share our food with them, in order that they should not starve to death. Fortunately, we were driving with us from Santash a whole flock of sheep, which I had bought from the Bogintsy, and had a good supply of kurt (cheese), presented to me by Burambai.

At the river Turgen'-ak-su, below its emergence from a mountain gorge, we made an afternoon halt among bushes of sea buckthorn, black barberry and willow. Having moved off from our camp at about one o'clock in the afternoon, instead of making directly for Terskei, the southern littoral area of Issyk-kul', I decided to stop overnight at a place which keenly interested me, namely a nearby ravine of the Tian'-Shan' itself, in which there was the warm medicinal spring of Alma-Arasan, farrenowned among the Karakirgiz, and from which the mountain river Ak-su, a tributary of the Dzhargalan, was making its way onto the Issyk-kul' plain.

On leaving our bivouac at the Turgen'-ak-su we crossed three rivulets, known among the Karakirgiz by the name of Dzherges. The current of the last of them, which was wide and swift, though shallow, was thickly overgrown with beautiful trees. Eventually, there appeared the gorge of Ak-su, the objective of our journey. We turned towards it and went up into the foothill terrain, from where there was now a good view of the blue Issyk-kul' with its two bays and the cape dividing them. It was from this ground that we came down into the river Ak-su's gorge itself Having reached the gorge, we proceeded along it for about five versts, by a path which led along the left bank of the river high above its rapid, noisy and foaming course, which justified its name of Ak-su (White water). The steep precipices of the mountains were thickly overgrown, partly with spruce forest,

partly with woods of various deciduous trees, among them the apple-trees from which the medicinal spring derived its name, Alma-Arasan.

Within half a versta of the Arasan there appeared outcrops of coarse-grained granite, slightly uplifting the sedimentary rocks, namely light grey limestones, which presented an excellent profile with an orientation from east to west and a dip of 290. Half a versta before the Arasan, from the path along which we were picking our way with difficulty high above the noisy and foaming river, we began to go down a very steep and rocky slope to the Arasan itself.

The sun was already hidden behind the mountains when, by seven o'clock in the evening, we reached the famous spring, near which we settled for the night,

The entrance to the Arasan basin was blocked by wooden gates, on which I found still intact Tibetan inscriptions similar to those that we had seen at Tamgaly-tash on the river Ili thirty versts below the Ili picket. A warm spring, on emerging from beneath the ground, was separated off into a quite spacious pool two metres long, one metre wide and one metre deep and faced with granite. Its temperature turned out to be 40 degrees C. The smell of the spring was sulphurous, but one could not see any discharge of gases and there were no bubbles. Their emergence was prevented by a quantity of gravel at the bottom of the Arasan; amidst this gravel one could not see the place where the spring came out from under the ground. From the Arasan basin there flowed a stream, a few metres long, discharging into the riverak-su. This river was rushing rapidly along the gorge over huge rocks; it was very foamy, and here and there was cascading as waterfalls. At seven o'clock in the evening its temperature was 11 degrees C, with an external air temperature of 15 degrees C. A hypsometric measurement gave the absolute altitude of our camp as 1,810 metres.

Having woken up on IO June at five o'clock in the morning at our camp near the warm spring, I hastened with special pleasure to look around the ravine of the river Ak-su, since it was the first valley of the central Tian'-Shan' into which I had managed to penetrate. In order to explore the nature of this valley as far as possible, I decided to go a few versts up the right bank of the river and then to come down by the left bank to its end, and to come out onto the Issyk-kul' plateau through a gorge which was very difficult of access, and along which it was absolutely impossible to pass with my numerous detachment, pack-loads and camels. However, I sent my entire detachment immediately ahead by a roundabout route with Kosharov, the artist, so as to join him where, having come down from his camp to the Issyk-kul' plain, he would be crossing the river Karakol at the place where a few decades later there appeared the town of Karakol (Przheval'sk).

At the same time (1O June 1857), when no Russians, apart from the Cossacks escorting me, had ever been in this locality, wishing to travel as light as possible,

I took with me only a Cossack interpreter, my inseparable travelling companion, and a Karakirgiz guide who knew the district well.

The question of whether there were volcanic rocks in the Tian'-Shan' was paramount for me, and since I had already become convinced that the crystalline rocks of the Ak-su valley, which slightly raised the strata of the sedimentary rocks (limestones and schists of the Palaeozoic system), turned out to be granites and syenites, it only remained for me to investigate carefully whether volcanic rocks could be found among the numerous boulders carried along by the rapid river from the remote heights of the Heavenly Range. But there were no volcanic rocks to be found among the boulders of the river in its valley. I could concentrate wholly on an exploration of the flora of the Ak-su valley and on making a full collecfion of plants encountered there, which over the whole area explored turned out to belong to the sub-alpine, forest and partly cultivated agricultural zones.

The valley's arboreal vegetation was composed of coniferous species: central Asiatic spruce, which goes up to the Himalayan range; archa, also typical arboreal types of central Asiatic mountain ranges; and of deciduous species: wild apple, rowan, and the following typical central Asiatic species of shrubs: black barberry (Berberis heteropoda), irgai (Cotoneaster nummularia), boiarka (Crataeguspinnatifida), two types of currant, and two types of honeysuckle. As for the herbaceous flora, it had resembled partly the flora of the cultivated zone of the Trans-Ili territory, partly that of the forest and even sub-alpine zones.

Having thoroughly explored the flora of the Ak-su valley within a few versts upstream from our camp, we turned back and began to descend along the left bank of the river. The going was very difficult, as the valley had the form of a wild gorge, overgrown with luxuriant vegetation. Only about five versts below Arasan the valley became wider, and since we were travelling along its high left extremity, there gradually unfolded an extensive view of the entire Issyk-kul' plain.

Soon, at the foot of the mountains we saw a wide river, shining like a silver ribbon, which a few dozen horsemen were crossing. That river was the very Karakol by which we had arranged to meet our detachment. Naturally, from a distance we took the horsemen who were going across for our own detachment, but we soon noticed our mistake and perceived that it was a strong force of wellarmed Sarybagish, travelling from east to west and fording the Karakol, which

was very full at that time. The Sarybagish, having noticed us, sent several horsemen to meet us. Our situation was perilous, as a hostile reception seemed unavoidable. Our descent was steep and difficult and, to our cost, in one place we had to jump over a cleft; moreover, the horse of my faithful companion suffered some sort of injury to its spine, after which it could only walk. At last we found ourselves face to face with six hostile horsemen, from whom we were separated only by the narrow and not very deep fissure. Our weapons were in readiness, but without resorting to them we entered upon preliminary negotiations, as often happened in ancient times with hostile meetings between Russians and steppe nomads (ie, Kumans or Kipchaks, of the culture associated with some of the kurgans and stone statues found in this area). To the Sarybagish's question as to who we were, we replied that we were Russians and belonged to that large detachment which had come to the assistance of the Bogintsy. And to the question where our detachment was then, we replied that it was very near, over the mountain and would soon soon appear. Then they told us that in the meanwhile they could very easily attack us and take us prisoner. We explained to them that it would cost them very dear, as we had on us weapons that could shoot as many times as we chose, and that in a battle against us they would only lose time, whereas now, having completed their river crossing before the arrival of the detachment, they could easily gallop away from our force. Luckily for us, suddenly from behind the high pass our detachment indeed began to come into sight. The sun played on the shining weapons of our foremost Cossacks, and then one after another, orderly and rhythmically, there proceeded our camels, accompanied by Bogintsy horsemen. It seemed that there was no end to our detachment descending from the hills. Our hostile interlocutors quickly galloped towards the ford, which the Sarybagish detachment had already managed to cross, and all of them began to tear along towards the southern shores of the lake.

Our detachment's descent and its crossing of the river took an hour and a half, and after that we rested for a short while on the sandy banks of the Karakol, which were greatly overgrown with barberry and sea buckthorn. Here I learnt from the accounts of Kosharov and the Cossacks the reasons for our detachment's delay. The circuitous route through the pass turned out to be quite inaccessible for our pack animals. The paths were so narrow and steep that more than once they had had to reload the camels. In one such place one of the packhorses fell through with its load and completely smashed itself up. Its load had to

be pulled out of the crevasse and divided among three spare horses. The krgiz, to whom this horse belonged, had embraced it and cried for it, as for a friend, and on parting with it, he cut off its ear and tail and took them with him. Of course, I hastened to make a gift of one of my spare horses to him.

Having moved off from our bivouac, we crossed several rivulets and at about one o'clock in the afternoon had our lunch by the river Chuipan, and then started again on the journey and by three o'clock in the afternoon reached the river Dzhety-oguz, where we stopped overnight. Here we met quite a few men, women and children, and they had with them some horses and oxen and three iurty. They were Bogintsy captives, freed by the Sarybagish, who had fled from the arable lands and irrigation ditches annexed by them from the Bogintsy after their defeat.

The view from our camp southwards through the Dzhety-oguz gorge to the Tian'-Shan'was entrancing.' The snow-white two-horned Oguz-bash blocked off the valley in the south and bore a resemblance to the Jungfraul in the Bemese Alps, but was even more distinctive and magnificent both in its shape and its whiteness.

Since the evening had not yet set in, I had time to take a look at the Dzhetyoguz valley, the second of the Tian'-Shan' valleys that I visited. I did not come across any outcrops and confined myself to a thorough examination of the boulders piled up by the river. Among them were to be found the same granites as in the gorge of the river Ak-su, syenites, coarse-grained diorites, gabbro, grey limestones, black and red porphyry, a small quantity of gneiss, sandstones, amphibolites, hornblende schists and breccia, but no volcanic rocks. The Dzhety-oguz valley was densely covered with shrubs: black barberry, irgai (Cotoneaster nummularia), boiarka (Crataegu spinnatifida), honeysuckle and sweetbrier (Rosa cinnamomea). All of this was intertwined with beautiful clematis (Clematis songarica).

On returning to our bivouac we enjoyed the extensive and magnificent view southwards over the boundless blue lake, and, beyond it, the high wall of the southern chain of the Zailiiskii Alatau (Kungei Alatau), which consisted of a whole row of coulisses, standing out as a continuous snowy crest. The sun was declining towards evening, above the Kungei dark clouds were floating, spectacularly illuminated by the sunset. While the snowy peaks of the Kungei Alatau had already began to burn with their Alpine shimmering (Alpengluhen), the soft, cupola-shaped foothills were flooded with a light that made them look like smoke or a cloud, as if all these mountains were burning and smouldering.

On II June we left our camp and, having crossed the Dzhety-oguz, began climbing the saddle-like foothills which separated the main ridge of the Tian' Shan' from its frontal chain, which the Karakirgiz called Orgochor. Having

climbed up the sloping plain, we were now going further to the west-southwest at the same level, and after about twelve versts we reached the river Bol'shaia Kyzyl-su. To the right of us there opened up a magnificent view of the blue lake and of its beautiful quadrangular bay, protected by spits; the rivers Bol'shaia and Malaia Kyzyl-su discharged into it. To the left there was a marvellous view of the main Tian'-Shan' chain with its continuous row of snowy peaks. Along the way we came upon several graves and tumuli.

After a further five versts we crossed the Malaia Kyzyl-su, and still further on we now came out at the river Zauka, on which there was the famous mountain pass over the main crest of the Tian'-Shan', leading into Kashgaria and Fergana.

In front of the entrance to the Zauka valley' we encountered fifteen Bogintsy horsemen. This was a small reconnaissance detachment, sent by Burambai to investigate the place of the nomadic camps of the junior manap of the Sarybaksh tribe by the name of Tiuregei'dy, who, by reason of his enterprise and courage, was the most dangerous enemy of the Bogintsy. Their exploratory baranta had not been a success: they were returning home without any plunder, but in terms of reconnaissance it was very successful: it brought comforting news for me that Tiuregel'dy was roaming from place to place far from the Zauka Pass in the less accessible, more westerly valleys of the Tian'-Shan', which were well protected against possible attacks by the Bogintsy. I could consider my ascent to the Zauka Pass to be quite safe, although Tiuregel'dy boasted that he would try to take captive the Russian 'ul'kuntiure' (big chief), as the Karakirgiz called me.

After meeting the Bogintsy horsemen, I sent my whole detachment, now without any apprehension, along the route indicated by them, straight to the Zauka Pass, and as for myself, without baggage, accompanied only by my constant companion, the Cossack interpreter, and also by the head of the Bogintsy reconnaissance party, whom we had met and who enjoyed the special trust of Burambai, I engaged in a thorough investigation of the surroundings, which turned out to be equally interesting in both geological and historical respects.

The terrain across which we came to the river Zauka was called Kyzyl-dzhar. It derived its name of 'Krasnyi Iar' (Red Cliff) from a huge outcrop of rather loose red sandstone, filled with boulders and beautifully stratified with a clear alignment from east to west and a dip of 15 degrees to the south. This interesting rock formation was Issyk-kul' conglomerate, of very ancient origin, found by me in this way for the first time at a distance of more than twenty versts away from the lake and at a considerable height above its level.

In historical terms the terrain was of no less interest. The historical role of locality began as early as the seventh century AD. At that time (in the year 630) there penetrated hither the first traveller before me, an eye-witness who supplied geographical information about the Tian'-Shan' and Issyk-kul'. This was Huan-

tsang, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, who passed through here on his way from one of the towns of Semigrad'e, situated to the south of the Tian'-Shan', namely Ak-su, the capital of the Turkic kagan (khan). The pilgrim's route went through the Tian'-Shan', probably over the Zauka Pass, came down to the southern (Terskei) shore of Issyk-kul', along which it went further across the river Barskaun, came out from the western extremity of the lake to the river Chu, and passing through the Buam gorge, reached the upper reaches of the river Talas and the country of a 'Thousand springs' (Min-bulak). In this land there was at that time the headquarters of the Turkic Tugiuel kagan, bearing the name of Suiab. A hundred years after Huan-tsang's journey, Suiab, the capital of the khans, was destroyed by the Chinese in AD 748, and eighteen years after that (in 766) was again occupied by the Kharluks, people of the same Turkic tribe, who just like their fellow tribesmen, the Tukiue and the Kirgiz, came from southern Altai and the upper Enisei.

At that time the interesting area of Kyzyl-dzhar, where I was on 12 June, was occupied by the tribe of Dzhikil', an offshoot of the Khariuk tribe, who established their seat here, which received the name of Dzhar (Iar). Since the end of the eighth century the locality of Iar (Kyzyl-dzhar) rivalled in its population and culture other similar areas on the northern slope of the Tian'-Shan', namely Suiab in the country of 'a thousand springs' and Barskaun near the discharge of the river of that name into Issyk-kul'. In all these areas, even at the time of my travels in 1857, ancient ruins were visible, the remains of irrigation canals and orchard plantations, which were very ancient and had become completely wild, in the form of whole groves of apple-trees and apricot-trees. I could understand how much the area of Kyzyl-dzhar and the lower part of the Zauka valley were valued by Burambai, the elderly Karakirgiz manap, whose clan descended from the Dzhikil' khans who had chosen Kyzyl-dzhar to be their residence, and how the loss and destruction of his native hearth, his arable lands, small orchards and buildings depressed Burambai. Only after examination of the surroundings of

Kyzyl-dzhar did I realize what importance Burambai attached to the expedition which I planned into the heart of the Tian'-Shan', past the residence which he had lost, over the Zauka mountain pass. It brought back to him his motherland and the lands smiled on by nature, which had been the property of his ancestors for more than a thousand years, and also the wonderful pastures of the upper reaches of the Jaxartes (Syr-dar'ia) and of the Celestial Mountains, which had been seized by his enemies.

That is why the dispositions of the old manap, who considered my expedition to be his own business, were so vigorous. Burambai instructed the reconnaissance detachment's head, who was an intelligent person and enjoyed his trust, following our ascent of the Zauka Pass, to occupy, with the assistance of Sultan Tezek's detachment which was to arrive after me, not only the Kyzyl-dzhar locality and the Zauka valley, but also the whole Terskei as far as the mouth of the Barskaun, which Burambai considered to be the boundary of his domain with that of the Sarybagish. At the same time, Bogintsy and Alban mounted patrols were to guard our rear from a flanking movement and attack by hostile Sarybagish during the whole period of our ascent of the Zauka Pass and to the source of the Naryn (the upper Jaxartes).

Thus safeguarded, I parted with my fellow-traveller (the head of the Bogintsy detachment) and, accompanied only by my Cossack interpeter, made haste to catch up with my detachment on its way to the Zauka valley. Having galloped for two hours, at about one o'clock in the afternoon we now found our detachment at a bivouac in the valley of the river Zauka after a thirty-versts journey during that day. Immediately on my arrival the entire detachment moved off from their bivouac, and we went forward. After several versts of our ascent, the river divided into two branches, and we went along the western one, which seemed to us to be the main one.

The valley was wide and thickly covered with a beautiful fir forest. All the rock outcrops were left aside, but everywhere along my way I came across masses of syenite boulders. The views along the valley were fascinating. Opening up directly in front of us to the south was a marvellous group of snow peaks (belk), trimmed at the bottom with a wide edge of tall-trunked fir forest. Further to the right and left of this group we were delighted by bold rocky crests, which consisted of syenite spikes and towers, on which the snow clung only here and them In two places we noticed streams, which were dashing down sheer from the mountains, and one of which was failing like Staubbach, (ie, like the European Staubbach Falls, in a graceful curve like a horse's tail) but with a lesser

volume of water. At last we entered thick shady groves of coniferous forest. In them I was struck by the number of young saplings, prevailing over old trees, as if the forest had appeared only recently, something that I had not come across in Asia until now. But on one slope I did notice an extensive area of trees, completely withered and fallen.

Having passed through this upper forest zone, we crossed to the right bank of the river over a difficult ford, and then after a steep ascent went along a flatter, gently rising valley, and having travelled for approximately fifteen versts along it, turned to the south-west. In the distance before us there was visible a whole group of snowy belki, one of which seemed to be closing off the valley. We travelled about five versts along the foot of the belki, and, on account of the tiredness of our horses and camels, at last stopped overnight at a place convenient for a bivouac for a large detachment. A hypsometric measurement gave 2,360 metres for this bivouac.

Here we encounted a countless multitude of marmots, jumping out onto the stones on our approach and beginning their characteristic piercing whistling. The rock outcrops above our bivouac in a narrow and deep gorge, across which a mountain spring was making its way, failing like a waterfall, consisted of syenite. The vegetation in the upper part of the forest zone which we had passed was sub-alpine and eventually totally alpine. On 12 June at five o'clock in the morning the thermometer showed only 3.5 degrees C. At five o'clock we started our ascent, but already after half an hour the river divided into two branches, of which the valley of one went south-west, and the valley of the other went due south. The latter was pointed out to us by all the Karakirgiz guides as the quicker, although more difficult, and less accessible for our detachment, ascent to the Zauka PasS.2 We turned along this way, but here at the last pine-trees I decided to leave my

whole detachment with the pack-loads and camels and undertook the ascent to the top of the Zauka Pass accompanied only by Kosharov the artist, seven Cossacks and two Kirgiz with four pack-horses and two spares. Some of the Karakirgiz guides called the river, along which we had decided to go and which, according to their accounts, higher up was flowing through two lakes, Kashkasu, and others called it Zauka. Which of the two was more correct, I was unable to ascertain.

Having turned directly towards the south, we went at first along a fairly wide valley between cliffs consisting of black-green siliceous schists, which had replaced the syenites already somewhat below the bivouac at which I had left my detachment. The valley went up very rapidly. There began to appear plants of the alpine zone. Alpine marmots, as well as ground-hares or jerboas incessantly appeared on the path. The precipices of whetstone black slates had an alignment to the west-southwest.

After approximately an hour and a half of difficult climbing we came out to a beautiful and transparent alpine lake' of marvellous aquamarine colour; it was from this lake that the river, along which we had come, had its source. In the lake beautiful turpans (Casarca rutila) of a wonderful red metallic colour were swimming. Having gone round the lake by its western side, we climbed a colossal pile of the same schists, from under which the river feeding the lake was flowing into it from the south. The view from this pile of rocks backwards across the lake to a series of high snow belki was delightful.

However, the crossing from the lower alpine lake to the upper one was incredibly difficult for our horses, as the whole valley between the two lakes was so obstructed and even partitioned with huge boulders and slabs of siliccous schists and shales, under which the river, beginning from its exit from the upper lake all the way to its discharge into the lower one, was so deeply buried that it was impossible even to suspect its existence. This phenomenon was similar to that which occurs in Western Europe with the course of the river kone at the place known as Perte du Rhone.' The vegetation OD this whole pile of huge stones, under which the course of the river was buried, was sparse. However, I collected a few plants: two beautiful Cruciferae of brilliant yellow and lilac colour (Etyimum cheiranthus, Hesperis matronalis), one Scrophularia, and tall red Himalayan rhubarb.

With incredible difficulty we reached the upper alpine lake, which also had a beautiful green colour, but was less transparent. But the view across the lake to the south to the hollow of the Zauka Pass was even more picturesque, which was due to the fact that in the lower corner of the upper lake schists were replaced by granites, which rose above its left bank as high and beautiful cliffs, while in the right upper corner of the lake there were visible mountain peaks with patches of perpetual snow. Descending to the lake, we found a convenient place for our bivouac near it on its right, south-eastern side by the very foot of the last rise to the Zauka Pass. I decided to stop overnight here in order to have all the next day at my disposal for the final ascent of the top of the mountain pass, to the lakes which provided the sources of the Naryn, that is the upper reaches of the ancient laxartes (Syr-dar'la), which no-one had before reached.

On 13 June we moved off from our bivouac before sunrise and at first travelled along the southern shore of the lake but, having reached the river flowing into it from the mountain pass, started going up along it at first, and then turning east-southeast, continued our ascent of the mountain along paths which had been laid out in zigzag pattern among the protruding rocks. Our ascent was especially impeded by the fact that on our way we began to come across corpses of animals which seemed quite fresh, and which were lying in the most diverse poses in which sudden death had found them. Among them the most frequently encountered were horses, but there were also quite a lot of camels, sheep and cattle, and twice we came upon human corpses. All of them were excellently preserved since the time of their death (in May) in the icy atmosphere of the upper alpine zone.

Our ascent as far as the mountain hollow leading to the top of the pass took no less than two hours, as one careless step could have cost us our lives. Our horses trod timidly, taking fright before the corpses lying across the path. At one turn my horse, startled by an unexpected encounter with such a corpse, shied aside: I managed to jump off it onto a rock, while it slipped downwards, but held its ground on the precipice, catching onto a projecting rock with its front hooves. Almost at the same time, one of our pack-horses came down with its pack due to a similar fright, fell into the abyss and was smashed to death. We had to stop on the climb, where my saddle was transferred onto a spare horse, and I decided to leave four Cossacks and a krgiz at the foot of the pass until the next morning, having charged them with rescuing our baggage by getting it out of the abyss. I myself continued my ascent, accompanied by Kosharov, three Cossacks and two Kirgiz guides, who were leading two pack-horses and a spare one. On the steepest parts of the slope my fellow-travellers had to go on foot and lead the horses by the reins, and towards the end of the slope I myself dismounted and also went on foot; moreover, I was struck by the fact that I had to stop continually, gasping because of the difficulty in breathing thin air at such a altitude.

At last we reached the top of the pass,' which presented me with an unexpected sight; there were no longer any mountain giants in front of me, but before me unfolded an undulating plain, from which rose snow clad summits like relatively low hills. Amongst them there could be seen green lakes, only partly covered with ice, and in places where it was ice-free there were floating flocks of beautiful turpans (Casarca rutila), which were striking in their brilliant metallic red and blue colours, which resembled the colours of birds of paradise.

A hypsometric measurement gave 3,380 metres for the absolute altitude of the Zauka Pass. I began to feel noises in my ears, and I thought that they would immediate ly start bleeding. However, it turned out alright, and I again mounted my horse in order to climb the nearest, fairly gently sloping summit, from which I was able to view the entire hilly upland and catch sight of several more lakes. Then, having come down from the crest, I continued my journey southwards across marvellous alpine meadows. Luxuriant vegetation covered all the hill-slopes and was adorned with large bright flowers of blue and yellow gentians, pale lilac kupal'nitsa (Hegemone lilacina), and white and yellow buttercups.

But the most impressive were the extensive glades, everywhere covered with the golden heads of a peculiar and hitherto undescribed species of onion, because of which this whole part of the Tian'-Shan' received from the Chinese the name of Tsun-lin', that is'the onion mountains'. With pleasure the Cossacks ate their fill of this onion: so delicious did they find it. Besides this type of still absolutely unknown onion, which subsequently received in my honour the species name of Allium semenovi regel, on that day I also managed to find another new plant of the genus Oxytropis, which later received the name of Oxytropis oligantha from the botanist Bunge, who described it.

Having walked for a couple of hours across these marvellous alpine meadows, we climbed another gently sloping snow-covered hill, from whence we saw three more lakes, from which the rivers were already flowing to the southern side of the pass towards the south-east and, merging, formed a bigger river, the high

longitudinal valley of which, making for the west, disappeared in the hazy distance. That was the river Naryn, the upper reaches of the ancient Jaxartes, on the lower course of which (the Syr-dar'ia) Russia was already firmly established. We wandered for another two hours amongst the sources of the Naryn, but I did not dare to descend along its valley: our horses were exhausted and extensively injured.

It was impossible to spend the night at such an altitude, but it was too dangerous to go down into the fairly high Naryn valley, as we might be attacked there by a strong baranta of Sultan Tiuregel'dy. That is why, having spent about five hours at the Zauka Pass, I decided to turn back. On the way back, while still at the sources of the Naryn, we met a small, light brown, Tian'-Shan' mountain bear (Ursus arctos leuconyx). It certainly found rich pickings for itself on the scene of the fatal fight of the Bogintsy, towards which we headed on our return journey.

The site of this decisive and last battle between the Bogintsy and Sarybagish, according to the views of our guides, should be located a little to the right and to the east of our return route, between the familiar summit which we were ascending, and that plateau edge along which we had climbed up the pass. Pursued by the Sarybagish hot on their heels, the numerous Bogintsy clan had with serious losses climbed the plateau of the Zauka Pass; there, having satisfied themselves that it was impossible to achieve their initial plan to move away to the Naryn, they decided to turn towards the east along paths leading to the Sary-dzhas and Kokdzhar, and to pick their way to the Karkara to the nomadic camps of their supreme manap Burambai, from whom the rebellious clan had separated so thoughtlessly. But it was at this turn that the Bogintsy, weakened by losses during their difficult ascent, were overtaken from both sides by the Sarybagish detachments: of UmbetAla, who was pursuing them closely, and of Tiuregel'dy, who had gone around them from the side of the upper reaches of the Naryn. In the open area, to which we came out from the plateau edge nearest to the border of the crest, the fate of the B4ntsy was decided after a last desperate battle. All the animals in their herds and flocks that still had the strength to move were seized by the Sarybagish and quickly driven away by them to the upper reaches of the Naryn, while all that could not move fell in exhaustion on the battle-field, littering it with their corpses. Only those Bogintsy under whom their horses still survived, without turning their heads, galloped away to the east along the paths leading into the high foothill valIcys of Tengri-tag, and were not pursued any further by their conquerors, who turned towards the west into the valley of the Naryn with their rich booty.

The day was already drawing towards evening, when, having gone round the foot of the familiar summit, we came out at the 'field of the dead', covered with fmzcn carcasses, among which there were human corpses too. The impression made upon me by this field was far stronger than the impression of 'the morgue' at St. Bernard. Only here did I feel deeply the poetic address of the great poet

Pushkin to a similar glade with the words: 'Oh field, field, who has littered you with dead bones?'.)

It seemed to me that something was stirring in front of me on this dreadful field of the dead, and that I could hear some living sounds here. And indeed, as I moved forward across this waste I saw that something stirred in front of me, and, to my surprise, it was not a hallucination. A pack of Bogintsy dogs, which had remained on the battle-field since the spring and which lived there on dead bodies, which due to the cold had not in the least decayed, rushed towards us with joyful barking. These dogs attached themselves to us and remained our faithful companions during the whole of our onward journey until our return to Vernyi.

At about seven o'clock in the evening we turned quickly from 'the field of the dead' towards its northern margins, from which we began to go down along the same path up which we had come. It was already getting dark when from halfway on our descent, down below, at the foot of the pass on the shore of the alpine lake we spotted the lights of the bivouac of our four Cossacks, whom we had left and who were waiting for us, worried about our fate. At the bivouac I found both tea and supper, and my white tent, in which I was able to sleep for about four hours before dawn, having during the night dispatched two Kirgiz to our main detachment, which was waiting for us in the Zauka valley in order to warn them of our return.

On 14 June, already before dawn, we began to go down along the track, familiar to us, past both alpine lakes and further along the Zauka river, and by five o'clock in the morning we had joined up with our main detachment, which we found at the place where we had left it on 12 June, by the last fir-trees at the upper limit of the forest vegetation. The detachment, already warned about our return, had already left their bivouac during the night, and without wasting time we continued our non-stop descent from the Zauka Pass, but this time without that haste with which we had gone down from the alpine lakes to the upper border of the forest zone in order to join our detachment at dawn.

Already before the place of our main detachment's bivouac the schists, which comprised the outcrops of the valley, came to an end, and exposures of crystalline rocks, granites, began. Half-way between our detachment's bivouac and the place of our camp by the Zauka (on 12 June) I noticed also outcrops and screes of diorite porphyry on the left side of the valley. Somewhat lower, after a turn directly southwards, syenites began to appear both as outcrops and in screes.

Further along we were now going through a zone of fir forest, which was dense and rich in moss. Only as we were approaching Kyzyl-dzhar, the coniferous forest thinned out, and the fir-trees gave place to rowan.

The interesting locality of Kyzyl-dzhar required additional investigation,

which I undertook, not in the least delaying the further descent of the whole detachment to Lake Issyk-kul', by travelling separately from it without baggage but with my Cossack interpreter, the artist Kosharov and three Karakirgiz, who were well acquainted with the old residence of Burambai. Painstakingly, I collected samples of typical, in my opinion, ancient Issyk-kul' conglomerate, of which the entire Kyzyl-dzhar is composed, and checked the extent and dip of its strata. They turned out to be the same as I had observed in another place during our ascent: an orientation from east-northeast to west-southwest, and a dip of 15 degrees to the north. The sample of conglomerate, which became part of the extensive geological collection, which I had made all the way along our route at any new outcrop or change of rock, and which subsequently passed to the museum of the Mining Institute, consisted of red coarse-grained sand, fairly lightly cemented, with boulders of various Tian'-Shan' rocks, which were being brought into the lake by the rivers which feed it. That conglomerate displayed a propensity to have caves formed in it, which I noticed in one of the precipices on the right bank of the Zauka river. One such cave served as a storehouse for the mill in which Burambai ground his grain. The interior of this cave was very sooty. I did not find any inhabitants of the animal world except for two mice, which were feeding on remnants of bread. The floor of the cave sloped in accordance with the dip of the conglomerate of 15 degrees to the north. The most spacious cave was enclosed by a man-made stone fence, cemented with clay. Near the cave were the remains of Burambai's fortifications.

Having completed the additional survey of the Kyzyl-dzhar locality, we quickly set off to catch up with our detachment, which was slowly going down along the road towards Issyk-kul'. We went straight by the ancient ruins across the steppe foothills of the Tian'-Shan', and having caught up with our detachment, by five o'clock in the afternoon we came out to that beautiful lake's bay, into which both Kyzyl-su rivers discharged.

Here we made a halt and, since it was very hot, took it into our heads to swim; moreover, a bay convenient for this purpose struck us by its abundance of fish. Huge wild carp (Cyprinus carpio) with their beautiful scales were shining in the sun and splashed in large numbers at the very surface of the water (it was possibly their spawning season), getting entangled with thick undergrowths of water plants of the family of naiads, their long stems rising from the bottom, with which the bay had become overgrown right to its very middle. We did not have with us any equipment for catching fish, but the Cossacks, entering the water, took their sabres with them and, having drawn them, started slashing the fish, which were entangled in water-plants and splashing on the surface of the water. In approximately two hours this improvised means of fishing gave us up to eleven puds of fish, with which we cooked excellent fish-soup for the whole detachment, and

pickled the rest, having obtained some salt from the nearest saline through the Karakirgiz. In the bay the temperature of the water was 20.5 degrees C, with the air temperature at 28.5 degrees C. A hypsometric measurement gave 1,370 metres of the absolute altitude for our bivouac on the shore of the bay. We spent the night in the thickets of sea buckthorn and other shrubs on the bank of the Kyzyl-su river.

On 15 June at five o'clock in the morning it was only 9.5 degrees C. Having set out from our bivouac at that hour, in the shortest possible time we came onto the shore of Issyk-kul' itself, to the east of Kyzyl-su bay. I decided to devote the whole day to an exploration of the coastal strip of the lake, and then of the flora, not only of this zone but also of the entire plateau in which the deep basin of the lake was cut. Since on the entire Issyk-kul' there was at that time not a single boat, I could not even think of measuring the depth of the lake, and could only judge it by the Karakirgiz testimonies and by the general character of the hollow, which occupied the longitudinal valley between two gigantic mountain ridges, and which bore a similarity to the hollow of Lake Geneva. As it turned out afterwards, according to information conveyed by V V Nagaevl in 1892, the depth of the lake was determined to be eighty metres at seven versts away from the southern shore, 256 metres at twenty versts, and 300 metres at forty-two versts; a maximum depth of 425 metres may be reckoned, that is the lake appeared to be the deepest of all the European and Russian lakes, except for Baikal and the Caspian (in 1892 a depth of 702 metres was discovered by L. S. Berg by the southern shore).

I was especially interested in the littoral, which was about 30 to 60 metres wide, and in which I noticed two old shore terraces, parallel to each other, each three metres high. On this coastal strip one could find everything that the waves of the lake, famous of old among the natives for its storms, cast ashore. First ofall I examined the boulders and pebbles cast up by the waves, and became convinced that the rivers flowing into the lake from the Tian'-Shan' did not bring any volcanic rocks into it. Then amongst these boulders I found many remains of

fish, and also a significant quantity of shells, bones of water birds and even the bones and tusks of wild-boar. The remains of fish which I found belonged (except for the wild carp) to the species of marinka (Schizothorax pseudaksaiensis Issykkuli Berg) and osman (Diptychus dybowskii Ressler) from the rivers and lakes of Semirech'e, which were familiar to me and my accompanying Cossacks. And the shells which I collected and later sent to be identified by the zoologist Martens,' turned out to be a new species of limnei, which he described by the name of Limnaea obliquata mart. On this very shore shortly before my journey, the Bogintsy found a copper cauldron, which was very ancient by its form and decorations, and large in size, and some copper weapons, seemingly of the Bronze Age. (These artifacts were later collected and placed in a museum in Tashkent; unfortunately Semenov did not know what became of them after this museum was closed.)

The water of the lake here was a beautiful transparent blue, and on the more distant horizon an indigo-blue colour, and it was very salty. The view from the shore, which curved like an arch, of Cape Kara-burun, slightly elevated and jutting out into the lake, and of the main gigantic ridge of the Tian'-Shan', rising above the southern littoral of Issyk-kul' (Terskei), was truly fascinating. Unfortunately, in my exploration of the Issyk-kul' basin I had to restrict myself to a thorough examination of the coastal strip, and then to move on to an exploration of the inland flora of the Issyk-kul' plateau, since any hydrological researches of the lake's basin were out of the question in the absence of a boat. It was only my six outings to various places in 1856 and 1857, and also interrogation of the natives, that convinced me that there were not, and could hardly be, islands in Issyk-kul' of such a type as Aral-dzhol appeared to be in Lake Ala-kul'.

It would be interesting for me to check the Karakirgiz stories about ruins of buildings which had disappeared under the water, and which are to this day sometimes visible during low water level. In confirmation of this evidence the Karakirgiz informed me that they fairly often found bricks and stones, of which the disappeared underwater buildings were made, on the shore examined by me on 13 June. They pointed out to me the place at which they saw these buildings from the coast, which I visited on 14 June, and from the cape which separated the bays of Tiup and Dzhargalan. It seemed to me that this place was situated on the underwater continuation of Cape Kara-burun, and in any case on the

eastern, shallow part of the lake, because large quantities of deposits were constantly brought into it.

Irrespective of these buildings which had disappeared beneath the waters of Issyk-kul', there are also some other historical testimonies about islands which existed in Issyk-kul', and which have now apparently disappeared. These testimonies date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the fourteenth century, according to the testimony of Arab-Shakh', Timur the Great (Tamerlane) put his distinguished prisoners on an island in Issyk-kul', where he ordered a dwelling to be built for them. In the middle of the fifteenth century, according to the evidence of Muslim historians, one of the Mongol khans founded a fortification on an island in the middle of Issyk-kul' in the Koi-su locality, in which he kept his family for safety. Comparing these three testimonies, I have no reason to doubt their veracity and I come to the conclusion that all three relate to one and the same island, which existed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and at that time was built on, but disappeared together with its buildings under the waters of the lake since the sixteenth century.

But where could such an island be? Without doubt, in the eastern shallow part of Issyk-kul', as it was not rocky, of the Aral-tiube type in Lake Ala-kul', but alluvial, and in that case it should be referred to the place pointed out by the Karakirgiz at the underwater continuation of Cape Kara-burun. I find confirmation for the fact that the island was alluvial and was surrounded by shallow water in the name of the area of the lake in which the island was, 'Koi-su', which means 'the sheep's water'. The name Koi-su is often encountered in Central Asia and is always applied to such shallow and calm waters which sheep can cross easily. It is, in fact, 'the sheep's ford'. This could only be the water surface surrounding the alluvial island in Issyk-kul'which was formed on the underwater continuation of Kara-burun. It was not particularly difficult for it to disappear with all its buildings under the waves of Issyk-kul' during any severe storm which accompanied one of those earthquakes to which the shores of Issyk-kul were frequently exposed. Thus the fragments of the buildings, cast on the shore visited by me on 14 June 1857, date not from the Usun-Chinese period (second century), but from the Mongol era (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries).

Having left the interesting shores of Issyk-kul', we used the rest of the day to travel from the coastal area of the lake across the steppe surface of the Issyk-kul' plateau, and having also crossed the river Dzhety-oguz, we came out to the river Dzhargalan, where we stopped overnight, having collected very rich material on the flora of the Issyk-kul' plateau. Moreover, in spite of the comparative poverty of the flora and predominance in it of usual plants of the European-Sarmatian

and Western Siberian plains, I managed to find a totally new plant of the Central Asian type, of the Scrophularia family, which was later named Odontites breviflora.

It rained throughout the night of 15 June at our Dzhargalan camp.

On 16 June at seven o'clock in the morning, when we left our camp at the Dzhargalan, the weather had already improved somewhat, and the thermometer showed 14 degrees Celsius. We came up to the coastal swell and, across slightly undulating and somewhat rising ground, climbed up Tasma, a wide belt separating the parallel courses of the rivers Dzhargalan and Tiup. Having come up to Tasma, we saw the beautiful grave of a Bogintsy folk hero by the name of Nogai who had died at this place in 1842. This memorial, made by the best Kashgar craftsmen, cost Nogai's family quite dear: they paid for it two iamby of silver, two camels, five horses and 300 sheep. The memorial looked like a small temple of oriental architecture with a cupola and a tower. In the front wall there could be seen a door in a deep embrasure, while the cupola had had painted over it an extremely crude fresco, on which were depicted Nogai himself on a horse and with a long lance in his hand, and behind him, also on a horsk, his son, Chon-karach, and

further off all the members of Nogai's family and a line of pack-camels. Between the groups there were depicted fantastic trees and even flowers. All the bricks of which the building was constructed were brought from Kashgar. Among them bricks of red colour were somewhat cruder and worse than our Russian bricks, but on the other hand the grey ones were of better quality and were characterized by strength and resonant quality. But the glazed bricks were particularly strong and beautiful, obviously having been collected from ancient ruins. The room inside the building was octagonal and high, about four metres in diameter, but completely empty.

Our further journey across Tasma took another two hours. The soil here seemed much more fertile than at Terskei, and the grasses were richer, but nevertheless they resembled those of the slightly sandy European Russian steppe. Then we saw before us the entire wide valley of the river Tiup, stretching from east to west, and the long bay of Issyk-kul', into which it discharged. The whole of the Zailiiskii Alatau in front of us was covered in dense fog.

Having travelled for half an hour across the valley of the Tiup, we reached the river itself, forded it and came out to the opposite, steep slope across from Dzhantai's grave. This grave was higher and more beautiful in architectural respects than the first one: it had a cupola and two towers, and on the front wall there could be seen the beautiful patterned embrasures of the windows and doors with interesting decorations above. The room inside the building was high, cylindrical, and placed in its middle was a kind of sarcophagus.

Proceeding further from the grave of Dzhantai on the way to Kungei, that is the northern littoral of Issyk-kul', and having crossed the river Vadpak, we noticed here a few ancient, so-called 'stone images', such as are encountered in the southern Russian (Novorossiisk) steppes, that is all along the trail of migrating nomads from Middle Asia. The local stone images were roughly carved from syenite, deeply dug into the earth and had broad flat faces, albeit male ones with long moustaches. Here we also came upon the 'chudskii' tumuli.

(Note: the stone images mentioned by Semenov, called Kamennye baby or balbaly, are ancient anthropomorphic stone statues found in considerable numbers from southern Russia and former Austrian Galicia through southern Siberia and central Asia to Mongolia. They are carved from sandstone, limestone and granite and vary from 0.7 to 3.5 metres in height, averaging 1.5 to 2.0 metres. First noted by a Dutch traveller in the thirteenth century, they were more systematically recorded on the seventeenth-century land surveys where they appeared to be aligned along routes and boundaries. Elsewhere, the statues seem to be associated with kurgans, although it remains unclear as to whether they were grave monuments or indeed from what period and what people they derive. Where they depict facial characteristics their outlines seem to portray Turkic rather than Mongol features, and they have variously been attributed to the Kumans (Polovtsy), Huns, Goths, Tatars, Alans and Scythians. Their dating appears to be equally problematical, and Uvarov believed that in different localities they ranged from the early Iron Age to the early Christian period.)

It is obvious that Santash, as well as the space between the Tian'-Shan'and the ZailiiskiiAlatau, likewise both shores of Issyk-kul', as also the courses of the

rivers Chu and Talas served as the most well-worn tracks of migrations of peoples from inner upland Asia, about which the Chinese chronicles have preserved very detailed recollections. As far back as the second century BC. these chronicles tell of nomadic peoples with whom the Chinese were becoming acquainted on the north-western outskirts of the Middle Chinese Kingdom, at the place where its province of Gan-su encroaches upon the Central Asian upland as a comparatively narrow strip, as if extending its hand in order to seize it. The most energetic of the Asiatic nomads readily strove for these north-western outskirts of the kingdom, finding the Achilles' heel of China here, since from here, during the period when the Chinese state was at its weakest, they were able with impunity to batter it with their invasions, taking away with them rich plunder from the Chinese settlements which they ravaged.

The most powerful and dangerous of these nomadic peoples for China during the last two centuries BC were the Huns, who lived here with their subject tribes, the dark Yue-dzhistsi [Yue-chih] of Mongolian type, and the blue-eyed and redhaired Usuns [Wu-sun]. In the second century BC, when the state system of China, after a period of weakness, began to re-awaken, the Chinese managed to force the Huns back somewhat, away from the Gan-su entrance into the rich and fertile Chinese plains. The Huns drew back, and in their turn pushed out the Usuns and the Yue-dzhistsi from their nomadic camps, forcing them to retreat to the distant west. First the Usuns moved, and following the northern Tian'-Shan' road (Tian'-Shan'-Bei-Lu), emerged into the basin of the river Ili. The Yue-dzhistsi slowly started moving after them, too. At first they held out still in the vicinity of the Huns, but, defeated by them again, they then ran without looking back with the intention of joining up with the Usuns. At first following the southern Tian'-Shan' road, they crossed to the northern slope of the Celestial Mountains in the meridian of the town of Hami,(2) but having found that this northern slope was occupied by the Usuns, who had gained a firm foothold both in the basin of the Ili and in the Issyk-kul' basin, went ahead past them, turned

aside again southwards and came out to the Jaxartes into ancient Sogdiana, and from there went further to the west into Europe.

The Usuns remained the undisputed rulers of the Issyk-kul' basin for five centuries, and it would seem they must have left behind some monuments, of which one should refer the local stone images, the Bronze Age weapons found here, and generally the most ancient objects among those cast ashore by the waves of Issyk-kul'.

According to the Chinese chronicles, which were always detailed, there were 120,000 families of Usuns, who established themselves in this their second fatherland, while their army comprised 188,000 horsemen. Their country, according to the description in the Chinese chronicles, abounded in excellent pastures and herds, which made up their principal wealth, but it was cold and very rainy, and its mountains were covered with fir-trees and deciduous forests. The Usuns were primarily engaged in horse-breeding: the wealthy ones had more than four, and even five, thousand horses. Although the Usuns were under the supreme dominion of the Huns, all the same they had their own quite powerful sovereigns, who bore the title of kiun-mi. The Chinese readily sought an alliance with these Usun rulers in order to instigate wars, in case of need, in the rear of their powerful enemies. That is why in 107 BC the Chinese Court gave their princess in marriage to the Usun king with the title of kiun'-di. The first Chinese palace was built for this queen in the main nomad camp of the Usun king. This royal residence the Chinese called Chi-gu-chin, that is 'the town of the red valley'. This 'red valley', according to the idea which I formed on the spot, could only have been the valley of the Dzhargalan, but in any case Chi-guchin was not on the shore of Issyk-kul', but at some distance from it, as is confirmed by ancient Chinese maps, and that was brought about by the need of the Usun rulers to be surrounded by rich pastures and not by water.

A plaintive song of the Usun queen, written by her even before the buildingof the palace at the end of the second century Bc, has been preserved by the Chinese chroniclers. Here is a translation of it:

My relatives gave me in marriage

And forced me to live in a far country,

My poor iurta serves me as a palace,

Its walls upholstered with thick felt.

Raw meat is my food,

And sour milk is my drink.

My senses long for my fatherland,

And my heart is deeply wounded.

Oh, if I could be a little bird of passage,

How quickly would I fly there.

But already during the reign of the queen's grandson, by the name of Ud-zyty, the kingdom became divided into bigger and smaller portions, and the temporary capital of Chi-gu-chin was abandoned for ever.

Undoubtedly, what contributed most of all to the fall of the Usun state was the fact that the Huns, gradually forced out by Chinese policies from the vicinity of the province Gan-su and from Tangut, also moved away to the west and found for themselves a second fatherland in Dzhungaria, having subordinated all the nomads who lived between the Tian'-Shan' and the Altai, and who belonged mainly to the Eastern Turkic tribes (Tu-kiue). Chinese chroniclers vigilantly observed the movements of their enemies, gathering detailed information about them, but at the beginning of our era they had already lost sight of them, contenting themselves with a final statement that they had left for Sikhai, that is 'the western sea', by which the Chinese historians meant the Aral-Caspian basin. It appears that the Chinese Huns, according to the testimony of their chroniclers, could not have gone to the west by any other route from Dzhungaria but that through the present-day Kirgiz steppes and across the river Ural into the Trans-Volga region, where for the first time the European Huns became known in the basin of the river Itil (Volga), which apparently gave its name to the famous Attila. Only the Asiatic Huns came into Europe from their second fatherland, not solely in their tribal composition, but as an agglomeration, composed of various tribes of nomads who lived between the Tian'-Shan'and Altai, and who recognized the political dominion of the Huns. By no means all these tribes followed the Huns, and many remained on the beautiful pastures of Dzhungaria; instead of them, during their further movement the Asiatic Huns carried away peoples whom they came upon on their way, mainly Finnish tribes.

Chinese chroniclers mention the Usuns as far back as before the beginning of the fourth century AD. Forced out of their Tian'-Shan'nomadic encampments at that time by the wave created by the great movement of the Huns, they fled partly to the south-west towards the upper laxartes and Trans-Oxiana, and partly to the north-west into the Kirgiz steppe, where they submitted to Turkic tribes (Tu-kiue), who had moved there, became mixed with them in unions, which in comparatively modern times received the name of Kirgiz-Kazakhs, and since then have now disappeared from the theatre of history. It is obvious that one should look for the remains of the Usuns among the tribes of the Karakirgiz and

Kirgiz of the Great Horde, among whom on the one hand I met from time to time blue-eyed and red-haired people, and on the other hand, there survived the word 'Usun', by which the Kirgiz of the Great Horde designate two of their clans, but the Sarybagish - one of their clans. It is clear that no monuments, besides those stone images and some bronze weapons, could have survived from the nomads who lived here before the beginning of our era, but on the other hand the nature of the Trans-Ili region and the Tian'-Shan' foothills has here and there preserved its typical features, which were noted so well by the Chinese two thousand years ago.

To resume my narrative, we used the whole day of 16 June for exploration of the vast steppe plateau which separates the Tian'-Shan' from the Zailiiskii Alatau eastwards of Issyk-kul', and in which were incised not very deeply the longitudinal, parallel valleys of the main tributaries of the lake, the Dzhargalan and Tiup, divided from each other by a gentle ridge which had the name of Tasma, and then we made our way to the northern littoral of Issyk-kul', Kungei, in which I was interested no less than in the southern one, Terskei.

Beyond the Badpak-kara rivulet, where we came upon the ancient stone images, we now reached Kungei, whence there opened up before us a view of Issyk-kul' with Cape Kok-kulusun, which juts out into it, and with two transparent blue bays. Unfortunately, by four o'clock in the afternoon, at a temperature of 14 degrees C, it started pouring with rain, and having reached the river Kurmenty, we came down along it to the bay into which it discharges, and settled here for the night among thickets of sea buckthorn and willow.

It poured with rain during the whole night of 16-17 June, and from two o'clock in the afternoon it began hailing heavily. Only by half past nine in the morning of 17 June did the weather clear up completely, and we came out, having passed by Kurmenty Bay, to the shore of Issyk-kul', at the place where from this shore there opened up that truly enchanting view to the south-west along the lake's basin, which was 170 versts long and fifty-five versts wide, and from which the entire continuous snow-white series of the Tian'-Shan' giants seemed to rise from the boundless indigo-blue surface of the lake. From here the artist Kosharov made some pictures, partly in pencil, partly with oil-paints, when the waves dashing against the shore had not yet had time to calm down after the storm.

The character of the coastal strip at Kungei turned out to be the same as it was at Terskei: a terrace one metre high, and between it and the water level there was a wide sandy belt, onto which the surf of the waves deposits pebbles, boulders, shells, bones of fish and water birds, and objects that belonged to people who lived on the shores of Issyk-kul'. Among the latter I searched in vain for what interested me most of all. During my stay in Venice in the early fifties, on the

famous Catalan map (an 8-panel wooden 'atlas' painted circa AD 1375 by Abraham Cresques for the King of Aragon; now in the Bibliothkque nationale, Paris) which was preserved there, I had seen for the first time a picture of Issyk-kul', and on its northern side there was depicted a monastery of the Nestorian Christians, who, as is well known, had fled from the countries of the Near East (Syria, etc.) into the heart of Asia and established their monastery in the twelfth century on the shore of Issyk-kul'. It is obvious that, if this monastery was on Kungei, the monks who had founded it could have chosen a place for that purpose on the shore of one of the numerous bays of Kungei, which was protected from the lake's choppiness and was rich in fish. Kurmenty Bay quite suited these conditions, but unfortunately I did not find any objects which would have justified my supposition, either on its shore or in its adjacent littorine deposits.

(Note: Nestorian Christianity developed from the heretic Nestorius, born in Caesarea Hermaniki on the Euphrates. He was deposed as Patriarch of Constantinople in AD 431, and his followers in eastern districts of the Antioch patriarchate were forced to move to Persia, where they were welcomed as refugees from hostile Byzantium. The sect subsequently spread to Middle Asia, the Malabar Coast of India, and China. When Persian rulers adopted Islam in the seventh century the Nestorians preserved their rites as a protected religion, but under Tamerlane they were heavily persecuted and few groups survived in central Asia. The possibility of a twelfth-century Nestorian monastery on Issyk-kul' was thus quite conceivable.)

Having enjoyed wandering around the lake's shore for about half an hour and having collected a few more interesting shells, we turned to the place where the river Kurmenty made its exit from the mountains and walked along the track across the field, pointed out to us by our guides, of the memorable battle in which there had died the manap Urman, famed among the Karakirgiz. He was mortally wounded by Klych, Burambai's son, with a lance thrust, which penetrated right to the heart. Urman died in the iurta of Kodzhigul, Burambai's cousin, in the arms of his daughter, who came galloping to him, and who was formerly married to Emirzak, the second son of Burambai. Up to 6,000 horsemen from both sides took part in the battle, and in spite of Urman's death, the Sarybagish gained total victory. That was as far back as 1854, and since then, up to my arrival in 1857, the Bogintsy had lost all their Issyk-kul' domains, stretching over the middle of the lake both in Terskei and in Kungei, and had moved away to Santash.

During my long talks with the Karakirgiz about the battle I had an opportunity to question them about the character of the Issyk-kul's winters. From these inquiries it turned out that the lake never freezes over, but that winters tend to be cold there, and although it snows very little, nevertheless the small bays of the lake which are not affected by the movement of the waves become covered with ice.

END

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