Across the Roof of the World. 



attached to his halter managed to struggle ashore lower down, 

 where he calmly proceeded to nibble the long grass as though 

 nothing had happened. 



This little test of the water's power was sufficient to convince 

 me that a crossing was out of the question, so I decided to camp 

 and effect one the following morning. Daylight, however, brought 

 no appreciable diminution in the volume, and after several 

 vain attempts to get over I had a path cut through the dense 

 jungle on our side along which the yaks were passed, and thence 

 over another rock slide as steep and formidable as the one we 

 had crossed the day before. We succeeded in getting over the 

 Hi Su lower down, an undertaking that involved much agihty 

 amongst giant boulders, the least slip from which might easily 

 have cost us our lives. 



However, luck was again with me, and I stood at last on the 

 banks of the Yarkand River, down which I hoped to travel on 

 to the plains of Chinese Turkistan. 



The Yarkand is the chief river of this corner of the Celestial 

 Empire, and takes its rise in the glaciers of the Karakoram Range 

 hard by the well-known Karakoram Pass, the latter rising to a 

 height of over 18,000 feet, and notable from the fact that it is the 

 highest pass in the world used as a trade route. The upper waters 

 of the Yarkand flow through the Raskum Valley, famed, as I have 

 already indicated, for the Kanjuti raids, of which it was formerly 

 the scene. It is a rushing torrent shut in by high mountains, 

 until reaching a point just beyond its junction with the Hi Su 

 whence it flows through tremendous gorges whose sides fall away 

 in sheer precipices. It is these gorges that prevent the traveller 

 following the course of the river, especially during the spring and 

 early summer, when the water therein constitutes an impassable 

 obstacle. Beyond the point where it issues from the mountains 

 it flows through Kashgaria, doing much to assist in the cultivation 

 of tracts of land in this district. 



92 



