350 
THROUGH ASIA 
neighbourhood the whole year round, but wandered from 
yeylau (summer grazing-ground) to yeylau, stopping one 
or two months at each place. In winter it was terribly 
cold, and there were heavy falls of snow, making it 
difficult for the sheep to find pasture. After a continuous 
snowfall, enormous avalanches were frequent, carrying 
down boulders and debris with them. 
The kind old beg gave us a sheep and a bowl of yak’s 
milk, and was only sorry, he said, that his great age 
prevented him from coming with us on our mountaineer- 
ing trips. He told us the old story of the sheikh, who 
went up Mus-tagh-ata and saw a white-bearded man and 
a white camel, and brought down from the top an enor- 
mous iron pot, which is now kept at a masar (tomb) in 
the Shindeh valley. We talked for a long time, chiefly 
about my plans ; and it was late in the evening before 
the old man went back to his lonely home among the 
moraines. 
The air was milder than usual. The night was bright 
and still ; and the snowfields gleamed silvery white in the 
moonlight. The moraines flung out their deep shadows, 
and underneath gaped the dark abyss of the valley through 
the weird stillness of the night. Every now and again 
the distant bleating of the beg’s flocks, or the tinkle of 
running water, penetrated to our ears. 
On August 9th we explored the left side of the Chal- 
tumak glacier, riding up the moraine to a point on the flank 
of the mountain, which gave us a splendid view over the 
glacier. It was quite regular in shape, and was intersected 
by a double system of crevasses, one transverse, the other 
longitudinal. This resulted in a series of ice-pyramids, 
and gave the glacier a chequered appearance. The stones 
and fragments of rock which fell from the moraine into the 
crevasses caused the intersecting lines to look like black 
stripes. 
At the place where we were standing, the gneiss cavities 
had been some time or other polished by the ice of a 
former branch of the ice-sheet. This ice-sheet still covers 
immense areas on the side of Mus-tagh-ata, wrapping the 
