A SUMMER IN HIGH ASIA. 



in their autumnal tints, and the ride up to the 

 summit of the Pass was most enjoyable. Instead 

 of the nine miles of snow that we had experienced 

 in May, we now beheld an expanse of grass, 

 brilliant with wild flowers ; the bitterly cold wind 

 on the top, however, told us that it would not be 

 long before the first snow would come and turn the 

 Zogi-La into a wilderness of white and rock for the 

 long winter months. On reaching the ridge that 

 descends so precipitously into the Vale of Kashmir, 

 the path, instead of leading straight down the nalah 

 as it had done on our way up, when this was an 

 ice-bound slope, led along the hillside, and then by 

 a very steep zig-zag path down to Baltal. 



Here, at the bottom of an ascent, we saw the 

 skeletons of several ponies that had fallen and 

 perished earlier in the season. The view from the 

 top of the ridge into the beautiful Sindh valley, 

 shut in by its pine-clad cliffs topped with snow, and 

 now blazing with autumn colours, fairly took our 

 breath away after our wanderings in stony wastes ; 

 the air, too, at once became softer and milder, and 

 after a short delay to gaze on so fair a scene, we 

 hastened down the path. In front of us was a long 

 string of laden ponies going down to India from 

 Yarkand, and as one of these ponies was turning a 

 corner, his load caught in a projecting rock, and in 

 a moment he was falling over and over down a 

 slope as near perpendicular as might be, from a 



height some three hundred feet above the stream. 



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