MUS-TAGH-ATA 
22 I 
The Kirghiz tell further, that on the top of Mus-tagh- 
ata there exists an ancient city named Janaidar, which 
was built in the days when universal happiness and univer- 
sal peace reigned throughout the worki. But since that 
time there has been no intercourse between the people of 
Janaidar and the inhabitants of the earth. Consequently 
the former still enjoy an existence of unblemished happi- 
ness. In the city of bliss there are fruit-trees which bear 
magnificent fruit all the year round, flowers which never 
wither, women who never grow old and never lose their 
beauty. The choicest pleasures of life are as common 
there as bread ; death, cold, and darkness are banished 
from its confines for ever. 
In a word, Mus-tagh-ata resembles Mount Demavend in 
northern Persia, and other strikingly conspicuous moun- 
tains, in being invested with a halo of mystery and made 
the centre of a tissue of fantastic legends and stories. The 
half-wild Kirghiz look upon it as a holy mountain, and 
regard it with profound reverence and fear. No wonder 
then the European does not escape the magic glamour 
of its spell ! 
Mus-tagh-ata, the loftiest mountain of the Pamirs, and one 
of the loftiest mountains in the world, towers up to the height 
of 25,600 feet, and like a mighty bastion overlooks the 
barren wastes of Central Asia. It is the culminating point 
in a meridional chain, the Mus-tagh or Ice Mountains, a chain 
that is worthy to rank with the stupendous ranges which 
converge upon the Roof of the World— the Plimalayas, 
Kwen-lun, Kara-korum, Hindu-kush. The unchallenged 
pre-eminence of Mus-tagh-ata over the peaks which cluster 
around it is proved by its name, which means the Father 
of the Ice Mountains. And the name is very appropriate ; 
for truly, like a father, it lifts its white head amongst its 
children, which in their turn are all clad in white robes 
of snowy purity and sheathed in breastplates of ice. 
The silvery sheen of the great mountain flashes like the 
gleam of a lighthouse to a vast distance across the desert 
ocean. Many a time have I gazed wonderingly upon it 
from afar off Many a month have I wandered on its 
