VI VIEW FROM THE BURME RANGE 83 



nala, and about 1 1 miles off as the crow flies, was 

 the rounded summit of the mountain called Deobani on 

 the map — 20,168 feet above the sea — exquisitely white in 

 the brilliant sunshine and clear air. To my right, about 



12 miles off, rose the sharp and lofty peak of Haramosh, 

 24,285 feet above the sea, and about 15,000 above where 

 I lay. From about my own level, up to the apex of the 

 glittering pinnacle, the whole was a mass of dazzling snow. 

 The hoarse sound of the Indus, as it rushed round the 

 Great Bend formed by the foot of the ridge where I sat, 

 was the only thing I could hear. But it was not till I 

 thought of what was immediately beyond the snow fields 

 around me, that I realised how far away I was from 

 civilised lands. The snowy summits of the five giants 

 who guard the upper end of the Jutyal nala looked down, 

 I knew, on the towns of Hunza and Nagar, so little 

 known till our expedition of 1891. Nagar, the nearer 

 of these two, was not quite 28 miles in a bee-line 

 from where I was. Behind me — hidden by a shoulder 

 of the ridge ^ — was Bunji, on the Gilgit road, about 



13 miles off, and direcdy to my left, concealed be- 

 hind the spur which runs down to the junction of the 

 Gilgit and Indus rivers, lay Gilgit itself — some 22 

 miles away. So I was almost at the edge of the map, 

 for the quarter-inch survey on which the Indian Atlas 

 sheets are based stopped a few miles short of Gilgit on 

 the west, and of Hunza and Nagar on the north. 



While we were there the coolies passed us, and about 

 3 P.M. we went on ourselves and camped at the snow-line. 

 The snow was lying about in pockets and corners of the 

 hill, but the more exposed parts of the ground were bare. 



