________________
OCTOBER, 1917)
THIRD JOURNEY OF EXPLORATION IN CENTRAL ASIA
225
It was with a delightful sense of freedom that on July 19 I started from my mountain camp for the high Ulugh-art Pass and the Pamirs beyond. For across them the road lay now open for me to those mountain regions north of the Oxus, which by reason of their varied geographical interest and their ethnic and historical associations have had a special fascination for me ever since my youth. On the following day I crossed the steep Ulugh-art Pass, about 16,200 feet above sea level, flanked by a magnificent glacier some 10 miles long. There I felt duly impressed with the fact that I had passed the great meridional mountaiti barrier, the ancient Imaos, which divided Ptolemy's "Inner" and " Outer Scythia," as in truth it does now Iran and Cathay. The same night, after a 33 miles' walk and ride I reach. ed the camp of Sir Percy Sykes returning from the Pamirs, and next clay enjoyed a time of happy reunion with him and his sister, that well-known traveller and writer, Miss Ella Sykes.
Five days of rapid travel then carried me over the northernmost Chinese Pamirs and up the gorge of the westernmost headwaters of the Kashgar River, until I struck the Russian military road to the Pamirs on the Kizil-art Pass where it crosses the Trans-Alai range. At the little rest-house of Por-döbe, which I reached that evening on my descent from the pass, I soon received most encouraging proof of the generous and truly kind way in which the Russian political authorities were prepared to facilitate my travels. There I had the good fortune to meet Colonel I. D. Yagello, who holds military and political charge of the Pamir Division, including now also Wakhan, Shughnan, and Roshan; he was then just pans. ing on a rapid visit to Tashkend I could not have hoped even on our side of the Hindu kush border for arrangements more complete or effective than those which proved to have been made on my behalf by this distinguished officer. It was for me a great additiona! pleasure to find in him an Oriental scholar deeply interested in the geography and ethnography of the Oxus regions, and anxious to aid whatever investigations could throw fresh light on their past. It was mainly through Colonel Yagello's unfailing aid that I succeeded in covering so much interesting ground, far more than my.original programme had included, within the available time and without a single day's loss. I shall always look back with sincere gratitude to his friendly interest and all the generous help which he and his assistants, officers at the several Russian Pamir posts, gave ine.
One of the chief objects which I had in view, when planning this extension of my journey across the Pamirs and the Russian territories on the Oxus, was to study there questions of historical geography, in the way which experience elsewhere in the East had taught me to be the best, i.e., on the spot. Hence it was a special satisfaction to me that at the very start I was able to march down the whole length of the big Alai Valley, a distance of over 70 miles. In the topographical configuration, climatic conditions, and local resources of this great Alpine basin I could trace additional indications supporting the belief that through this wide natural throughfare, skirting the northern of the Pamirs from east tu west, passed the route which the ancient silk traders from China followed down to the Middle Oxus, as outlined by that much-discussed record of classical geography where Marinus of Tyre describes the progress in the opposite direction of the agents of " Maös the Macedonian" from Bactria to the great silk mart in " the country of the Seres" or China. Similar obserrations make it appear to me very probable that the famous “Stone Tower" mentioned in that record must be located at or near Daraut-kurgban, a small Kirghiz village and now a
