February 26, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



12 ( 



glaciers all around us. Heavy suow-clouds too were unfor- 

 tunately collecting lo increase our difflcullies, and I felt that 

 we should bave a hard task before us. On first looking at 

 £>ne of these glaciers it would appear impossible to take 

 ponies up them, but the sides are always covered with mo- 

 raine, and my experience in the exploration of the Mustagh 

 Pass in 1887 showed that, by carefully reconnoitring ahead, 

 it was generally possible to take the ponies for a considerable 

 distance at least up such glaciers ; and as the one we had now 

 reached seemed no worse than others, and there appeared a 

 gap in the range which looked as if it might be a pass, I took 

 my ponies on, and after three days' scrambling on the ice, 

 reached the foot of the supposed pass, and started at .3.30 on 

 the following morning to find if it was at all practicable." 



Captain Tounghusband was, however, obliged to return 

 after reaching a height of 17,000 feet, and he decided to re- 

 turn to his camp on the Oprang River. He thus describes 

 the glaciers from which this river takes its rise: — 



"The length of this glacier is 18 miles, and its average 

 breadth half a mile; it is fed by three smaller glaciers on the 

 west and one on the east. At its upper part, immediately 

 under the pass, it is a smooth undulating snow-field about a 

 mile and a half in width. Lower down this Ji/ue is split up 

 into crevasses, which increase in size the further down we 

 get. Then the surface gradually breaks up into a mass of 

 ice domes, which lower down become sharp needle-like pin- 

 nacles of pure white ice. On each side lateral gravel mo- 

 raines appear, and other glaciers join, each with its centre of 

 white ice-peaks and its lateral moraines, and preserving each 

 its own distinct course down the valley, until some three 

 miles from its termination in the Oprang River, when the 

 icepeaks are all melted down and the glacier presents the 

 appearance of a billowy mass of moraine, and would look 

 like a vast collection of gravel heaps, were it not that you 

 see, here and there, a cave or a cliff of ice, showing that the 

 gravel forms really only a very thin coating on the surface, 

 and that beneath is all pure solid ice. This ice is of opaque 

 white, and not so green and transparent as other glaciers I 

 have seen, and the snow at the head of the glacier was ditFer- 

 ent from any I have seen before; for beneath the surface, or 

 when it was formed into lumps, it was of the most lovely 

 pale transparent blue. I must mention, too, that every flake 

 of snow that fell in the storm was a perfect hexagonal star, 

 most beautiful and delicate in form. The mountains on 

 either side of the valley, especially on the eastern side, are 

 extremely rugged and precipitous, forming little or no rest- 

 ing-place for the snow, which drains off immediately into 

 the glacier below. The western range, the main Mustagh 

 Range, was enveloped in clouds nearly the whole time, and 

 I only occasionally caught a glimpse of some peak of stu- 

 pendous height, one of them, the G-ushirbrum, over 26,000 

 feet, and others 24,000 feet. The snowfall on these moun- 

 tains must be very considerable, and it seems that this knot 

 of lofty mountains attracts the great mass of the snow-clouds, 

 and gets the share which ought to fall on the Kar&korum, 

 while these latter, being lower, attract the clouds to a less 

 degree, and are in consequence almost bare of snow." 



After some further exploration of the glaciers, rivers, and 

 passes in this wild region. Captain Younghusband returned 

 to India by way of Kashmir. In the summer of 1890, he 

 once more made his way northwards through Kashmir, with 

 a companion, Mr. Macartney. They reached Yarkand on 

 Aug. 31. 



"After a rest of two or three weeks at Yarkand," Captain 

 Younghusband went on to say, "Macartney and I left our 



companions and started for a trip round the Pamirs. Ap- 

 proaching this interesting region from the plains of Kash- 

 garia, one sees clearly how it has acquired the name of 

 Bam i-dunya, or Roof of the World. The Pamir Mountains 

 rise apparently quite suddenly out of the plain from a height 

 of 4,000 feet above sea-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 sepa- 

 rated 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 mountains on either side, which appeared 

 to me to be older than those further south, to have been 

 longer exposed to the wearing process, 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 g-o.' 



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 considerable height above the sea. The Tagh dum- 

 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 four- 

 teen 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; hut 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 ad- 

 vanced. 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 Turkistan, and then through the lower outer ranges of 

 hills covered with a thick deposit of mud and clay, which 

 Captain Younghusband believes to he 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 ToratPasses; through 

 the narrow defile known as the Tangitar, where one has to 



