THROUGH ASIA 
324 
conveniently situated for the investigation of the glaciers 
which streamed out towards the west. 
We started in a south - south - westerly direction, and 
made our way up the grass-grown slopes. The weather 
was cold and misty, with an occasional snowstorm. At 
length we reached the pass of Sarimek (the Pass of the 
Yeflow Elbow), an important feature in the country, as 
it forms the passage over a gigantic spur of the 
Mus-tagh-ata which stretches to the north-west, dividing 
the glaciers and streams of the northern declivities from 
those of the western. The pass was strewn with gravel 
and small boulders, and on its southern face were fissured 
rocks of an unusually hard, dark crystalline schist, inclined 
at an angle of thirty-eight degrees to the north. 
If, standing on this pass, we turned towards the massive 
knot of Mus-tagh-ata, the following picture from left^ to 
rio-ht, or from north to south, unfolded itself to view: First 
of ail, the rocky buttresses, foreshortened, with a small 
snow-clad glacier; then, between two arms of the mountain, 
both in part thickly carpeted with snow, there was another 
small glacier, fairly clean at the top, but at its lower 
extremity strewn with fine gravel, so that the blue ice m 
the fissures was only visible here and there. In the 
middle of the glacier transverse crevasses predominated 
at its lower end longitudinal crevasses. The tongue of 
the alacier was girdled by gigantic moraines crumpled 
up into several ridges. Between the third rocky buttress 
and that part of Mus-tagh-ata which we were on in 
April, and high up on the mountain-side^, there was a 
deep gorge, into which the Sarimek and Kamper-kishlak 
glaciers poured their streams, while they in their turn were 
separated by a huge snow-clad wall of rock. The former 
o-Iacier was encumbered with moraines ; the lattei was 
shining white. Finally, in the south, the pass of Ullug- 
rabat ; and in the west the entire Sarik-kol chain, with its 
thinly-scattered snowfields. It was partly hidden by pai- 
ticularly beautiful white cirrus-clouds, which contrasted 
strikingly with the steel-blue, wintry sky over the Pamirs 
in the background. 
