` 1893.) Geography and Travels. 259 
Yashil Kul, crossed the Great and Little Pamirs, and proceeded through 
Baroghil Pass to Chitral, Darkot and Yasin, whence they made their 
way to Gilghit. From the Great Pamir they enjoyed a view of magni- 
ficent mountain peaks over 20,000 feet high. They describe the Pamirs 
as flat valleys, with lakes having low shelving banks; barren areas 
with little grass. In Chitral the climate was much better, the warmth 
and the abundance of apricots contrasting sharply with the barren 
coldness of the Pamirs. 
D. W. Freshfield thus speaks of the Pamirs, after stating that the 
different strips of table-land form a district 280 miles long, from 120 
to 140 wide, and twelve thousand feet high, “tent-shaped glacier- 
covered mountains divided by broad easy gaps, bare heights naked of 
verdure and shorn of forests by bitter winds and frosts ; desolate lakes, 
a region which for the most part has neither fuel nor food; an Enga- 
dine of Asia, with nine months of winter and three months of cold 
weather; the home of wild sheep and that of a few wandering shep- 
herds; nomads’ land if not no man’s land.” The Chinese name for the 
eaid Woi the “half-way house to heaven,” while the word 
“Pamir” appears to be a Turki term for a plateau. Grombchevsky 
gives a more favorable account of the district. Wakhan, Shignan and 
Roshan are at present claimed by the Amir of Afghanistan. Mr. 
Younghusband found his way to Hunza in 1889 and to the Pamirs in 
1890. Between Leh and Hunza, or Kanjut, four passes, from 17,500 
to 18,500 feet high, must be crossed, amid glaciers and the grandest 
scenery. The home of the robber Kanjuts, or Hunza, (in which latter 
name some think to find the origin of the Huns), is eastward of Chi- 
tral. The villages of the Hunza are stone-walled forts, the entrance 
into which would be difficult if resisted. The sovereign, who made his 
way to power in good old Oriental fashion, by the murder of his rela- 
tives, owes allegiance to the Maharaja of Kashmir. The Taga-dum- 
bash Pamir descends as low as to 800 feet. 
Another recent traveller in this region is the Frenchman Dauvergne, 
who entered by Srinagar and Leh, over the Karakoram Pass to Sanju 
Kurgan, took a new route to the sources of the Oxus, crossed Baroghil 
Pass into Chitral, and then through unexplored passes found his way 
into Karambar Valley, and via Gilghit back to Srinagar. Beyond 
Kilian Pass (17,450), at Namelong, Dauvergne turned west and reached 
Kugiar Valley by the following passes, Namelong (12,140), Saraghar 
(13,250), Tuslar Dawan, (14,500), Tupa Dawan (15,400), (a great 
opening in a chain parallel to the Kuen Lun, not yet marked on the 
maps, with peaks sixteen to nineteen thousand feet in height); Sanich 
