[No. 1, 
\ 
78 
Recent Trans-Frontier Explorations , communicated by Col. J. T. Walker, 
C. B., B. E., Survey or-General of India. 
(With a Map.) 
During the year 1876, the Mulla, one of the explorers attached to the 
Great Trigonometrical Survey, made a survey up the course of the Indus 
from the point where it enters the plains above Atak, to the point where it 
is joined by the river of Gilghit. All other portions of the course of the 
Indus—from the table-lands of Tibet, where it takes its rise, down to its 
junction with the ocean—have long since been surveyed; but up to the present 
time this portion has remained unexplored, and has been shown on our maps by 
a dotted line, the usual symbol for geographical vagueness and uncertainty. 
Here the great river traverses a distance of some 220 miles, descending 
from a height of about 5,000 feet to that of 1,200 feet above the level of 
the sea. Its way winds tortuously through great mountain ranges, whose 
peaks are rarely less than 15,000 feet in height and culminate in the Nanga- 
Parbat, the well-known mountain whose height, 26,620 feet, is only ex¬ 
ceeded by a very few of the great peaks of the Himalayas. The river in 
many places is hemmed in so closely by these great ranges, that its valley 
is but a deep-cut, narrow gorge, and, as a rule, there is more of open space 
and culturable land in the lateral valleys, nestling between the spurs of the 
surrounding ranges, than in the principal valley itself. 
The positions and heights of all the most commanding peaks in this 
region had been long fixed by Captain Carter’s observations at trigono¬ 
metrical stations on the British Frontier line ; but no European has ever yet 
penetrated into it.* Very difficult of access from all quarters, it is in¬ 
habited by a number of hill tribes, each independent and suspicious of the 
other, who are in a great measure separated and protected from each other 
by natural barriers and fastnesses. As a whole, the region has never been 
brought into subjection by any of the surrounding powers. Each com¬ 
munity elects its own ruler, and has little intercourse with its neighbours ; 
and with the outer world it only communicates through the medium of a 
few individuals who have the privilege of travelling over the country as 
traders. The Mulla possesses this privilege, and thus in the double capa¬ 
city of trader and explorer, he traversed along the Indus, and through some 
of the lateral valleys, leaving the others for exploration hereafter. 
* Several itineraries which were obtained from native information are published 
in Dr. Leitner’s Dardistan, and they have been combined together, with considerable 
ingenuity and very tolerable success, by Mr. Ravcnstein, in a map published in the 
Geographical Magazine for August, 1875, 
