X THE FIVE UNNAMED GIANTS i6i 



they carried but little gravel or boulders. All were 

 covered with a thick blanket of snow, but in some places 

 where fragments of ice had been detached, big walls of 

 slaty blue, sometimes forming a series of giant steps, 

 stood out in contrast to the white around. The upper 

 half of the range was, of course, all under snow, and the 

 glittering semicircle of five splendid peaks (the lowest 

 21,570 feet above the sea), brilliantly lit up by the 

 morning sun, stood out with wonderful clearness against 

 the deep blue of a cloudless sky. The highest of the 

 five unnamed giants is actually a couple of hundred feet 

 higher than Haramosh, and though more than 5 miles 

 from where I stood, he looked so close that I could 

 hardly believe I could not throw a stone on to his 

 shining slopes. Every curve and line of the great 

 mountain seemed to be visible in that extraordinary 

 atmosphere. The crests of ridges running upwards, 

 where the snow sometimes thinned and permitted a 

 glimpse of the dark stone below, the dead white of the 

 hollows between where the snow lay yards thick, the 

 huge protuberances formed by masses of solid rock 

 which the friction of the ice of centuries had been 

 unable to grind down, even the paths of the avalanches 

 and the irregular forms which they assumed as they 

 rolled down, all stood out as clear, as if only a few 

 hundred yards away. 



When nearly over and close to the lateral moraine on 

 the w^est of the glacier, we saw three male ibex by them- 

 selves on a grassy slope not very far up, and at the edge 

 of one of the subsidiary glaciers to which I have already 

 referred. The horns of one seemed to be good, and of the 



