354 



NA TURE 



[February ii, 1892 



level at their base to over 25,000 feet at their loftiest summits — 

 a massive wall of rocks, snow, and ice. Mounting this wall the 

 traveller comes on to the Bam-i-dunya, which would perhaps be 

 better translated as the ' upper story ' of the world. Houses in 

 Turkistan are flat- roofed, and you ascend the outer wall and sit 

 out on the roof, which thus makes an upper story, and it appears 

 to me that it was in this sense that the Pamir region was called 

 the Roof of the World. The name, indeed, seems singularly 

 appropriate, for once through the gorges which lead up from the 

 plains, one enters a region of broad open valleys separated by 

 comparatively low ranges of mountains. These valleys are 

 known as Pamirs — Pamir being the term applied by the natives 

 of those parts to a particular kind of valley. In the Hindu 

 Kush and Himalayan region the valleys as a rule are deep, 

 narrow, and shut in. But on the Roof of the World they seem 

 to have been choked up with the debris falling from the moun- 

 tains on either side, which appeared to me to be older than those 

 further south, to have been longer exposed to the wearing pro- 

 cess, and to be more worn down — in many parts, indeed, being 

 rounded off into mere mounds, reminding one very much of 

 Tennyson's lines : — 



" ' The hills are shadows, and they flow 



From form to form, and nothing stands ; 

 They melt like mist ; the solid lands. 

 Like clouds they shape themselves and go.' 



The valleys have thus been filled up faster than the rainfall has 

 been able to wash them out, and so their bottoms are sometimes 

 as much as four or five miles broad, almost level, and of con- 

 siderable height above the sea. The Taghdum-bash Pamir 

 runs as low as 10,300 feet, but on the other hand, at its upper 

 extremity the height is over 15,000 feet ; and the other Pamirs 

 vary from twelve or thirteen to fourteen thousand feet above sea- 

 level. That is, the bottoms of these Pamir valleys are level 

 with the higher summits of the Alps. 



" As might be expected, the climate is very severe. I have 

 only been there in the autumn, and can therefore speak from 

 personal experience of that season only; but I visited them in 

 three successive years, and have seen ice in the basin of my tent 

 in August. I have seen the thermometer at zero (Fahrenheit) 

 at the end of September, and 18° below (that is, 50° of frost) 

 at the end of October. The snow on the valley bottoms does 

 not clear away before May is well advanced. June and July 

 and the beginning of August are said to be pleasant, though 

 with chilly nights ; and then, what we in England might very 

 justly call winter, but which, not to hurt the feelings of the 

 hardy Kirghiz who inhabit these inhospitable regions all the year 

 round, we will, for courtesy's sake, call autumn, commences." 



Captain Younghusband and Mr. Macartney advanced up those 

 long gravel desert slopes which lead out of the plains of Turk- 

 istan, and then through the lower outer ranges of hills covered 

 with a thick deposit of mud and clay, which Captain Young- 

 husband believes to be nothing else than the dust of the desert, 

 which is ever present in the well-known haze of Turkistan, 

 deposited on the mountain-sides ; then over the Kara-dawan, 

 Kizil-dawan, and Tprat Passes ; through the narrow defile 

 known as the Tangitar, where one has to force the ponies up a 

 deep violent stream rushing over huge boulders between precipit- 

 ous rocky cliffs, in which they noticed large square holes pierced, 

 suggesting to them that in former days this, tlie high road between 

 Eastern and Western Asia, was probably improved by having a 

 bridge over this difficult and dangerous part ; then over the 

 Chichiklik and Koh-mamak Passes and the Tagarma Plain, till 

 they reached the neighbourhood of Tash-kurgan, the northern- 

 most point of Captam Younghusband's explorations in the pre- 

 vious year. Passing through the Little Pamir, they struck the 

 Alichur Pamir near Chadir-tash at its eastern extremity, and 

 from there they looked down abroad level valley, averaging four 

 or five miles in width, to some high snowy peaks overhanging 

 Lake Yeshil-kul at its western extremity. The range bounding 

 this Pamir on the north is free of snow in summer, but that 

 separating it from the Great Pamir is of considerable height, the 

 summits are always covered with snow, and the passes across it 

 difficult. Traces of ancient glaciers are very frequent, and the 

 western end near Lake Yeshil-kul is choked up with their 

 moraines, forming a sea of gravel mounds, in the hollows of 

 which numerous lesser lakes may be seen. On the borders of 

 Yeshil-kul, at a place called Somatash, Captain Younghusband 

 found the fragments of a stone bearing an ancient inscription in 

 Turki, Chinese, and Manchu. This interesting relic, as far as 

 Captain Younghusband has been able to get the rubbings he 



NO. I 163, VOL. 45] 



took of it translated, refers to the expulsion of the two Khojas 

 from Kashgar by the Chinese in 1759, and relates how they were 

 pursued to the Badakhshan frontier. 



From the Ak-su Valley the two travellers ascended the 

 sterile valley of the Ak-baital, which at this season of the year 

 (October) has no water in it, and visited Lake Rang-kul. "On 

 the edge of this lake is a prominent outstanding rock, in which 

 there is a cave with what appears to be a perpetual light burn- 

 ing in it. This rock is called by the natives Chiragh-tash, i.e. 

 the Lamp Rock, and they account for the light by saying that it 

 comes from the eye of a dragon which lives in the cave. This 

 interesting rock naturally excited my curiosity. From below I 

 could see the light quite distinctly, and it seemed to come from 

 some phosphorescent substance. I asked the Kirghiz if any 

 one had ever entered the cave, and they replied that no one 

 would dare to risk the anger of the dragon. My Afghan 

 orderly, however, had as little belief in dragons as I had, and 

 we set off to scale the cliff together, and by dint of taking ofT 

 our boots and scrambling up the rocks, very much like cats, we 

 managed to reach the mouth of the cave, and on gaining an 

 entrance found that the light came neither from the eye of a 

 dragon nor from any phosphorescent substance, but from the 

 usual source of light — the sun. The cave, in fact, extended to 

 the other side of the rock, thus forming a hole right through it. 

 From below, however, you cannot see this, but only the roof of 

 the cavern, which, being covered with a lime deposit, reflects a 

 peculiar description of light. Whether the superstitious Kirghiz 

 will believe this or not I cannot say, but I think the probability 

 is that they will prefer to trust to the old traditions of their fore- 

 fathers rather than the wild story of a hare-brained stranger. 

 The water of Rang-kul is salt, and the colour is a beautiful 

 clear blue. The mountains in the vicinity are low, rounded, 

 and uninteresting, though from the eastern end a fine view of 

 the great snowy Tagarma Peak may be obtained." 



The winter was spent in Kashgar. On July 22, 1891, Captain 

 Younghusband left to return to India by way of the Pamirs and 

 Gilgif. 



" On reaching the Little Kara kul Lake, apiece of interesting 

 geography, which I believe had been first noticed by Mr. Ney 

 Elias, on his journey through these parts some years ago, pre- 

 sented itself. Captain Trotter, of the Forsyth mission, saw 

 from the plains of Kashgar a stupendous peak, the height of 

 which he found to be 25,300 feet, and the position of which he 

 determined accurately. From Tash-kurgan or its neighbour- 

 hood he also saw a high mountain mass in the direction of the 

 peak he had fixed from near Kashgar ; bad weather prevented 

 his determining the position of this second peak, but he thought 

 there was no doubt that the two were identical. Such, however,, 

 is not the case. There are two peaks, about 20 miles apart, one on 

 either side of the Little Kara-kul Lake. That seen from Tash-kur- 

 gan is the true Tagarma Peak, and cannot be seen from Kashgar ;. 

 while that seen from Kashgar cannot be seen from Tash-kurgan. 

 There appeared to me to be very little difference in height 

 between the two. Both are remarkable not only for their 

 extraordinary height, but also for their great massiveness. They 

 are not mere peaks, but grent masses of mountain, looking from 

 the lake as if they bulged out from the neighbouring plain ; and 

 one sees far more distinctly than is usually the case, the layers 

 upon layers of rock which have been upturned like the leaves of 

 a book forced upwards. It struck me too, especially from the 

 appearance of the rocks in the neighbourhood of the northern- 

 most peak, that these must have been upheaved far more 

 recently than the worn-out-looking mountains in the centre of 

 the region of the Pamirs. The appearance of these two great 

 mountain masses rising in stately grandeur on either side of a 

 beautiful lake of clear blue water is, as may be well imagined, a 

 truly magnificent spectacle, and, high as they are, their rise is so 

 gradual and even, that one feels sorely tempted to ascend their 

 maiden summits and view the scene from the loftiest parapets of 

 the 'Roof of the World.'" 



On October 4, Captain Younghusband and a companion left 

 the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir to explore " an interesting little coiner 

 of Central Asia, the point where the two watersheds — the one 

 between the Indus on the south and the Oxus and Eastern 

 Turkistan rivers on the north, and the other between the O.xus 

 on the west and the eastern Turkistan rivers on the east — join. 

 If any point can be called the Heart of Central Asia I should think 

 this must be it. Here on the Oxus side of the watershed are vast 

 snowfields and glaciers, and among these, with three of its sides 

 formed of cliffs of ice— the terminal walls of glaciers — we found 



