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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1917
· Russian frontier customs post, where the route up the main Kara-tegin Valley emerges
upon the Alai. It is the only direct one between Bactria and Eastern Turkestan which is practicable throughout for laden camels.
From Daraut-kurghan, where our supplies could conveniently be replenished, I turned south to strike across the succession of high snowy ranges which separate the headwaters of the Muk-su and the rivers of Roshan and Shughnan from the upperinost Oxus. It was the only route, apart from the well-known one leading across the Kizil-art and past Lake Kara-kul, by which I could cross the Russian Pamirs and their western buttresses from north to south, and this accounted for my choosing it. But it proved a distinctly difficult route to follow, even with such exceptionally hardy animals as Colonel Yagello's orders secured for me from the rare Kirghiz camps encountered. There was, however, abundant reward in the mass of interesting geographical observations to be gathered, and in the splendid views which it offered into a region of permanent snow and ice, little explored and in parts still unsurveyed.
As far as the Tanimaz River, a large tributary of the Bartang or Murghab River, our route led past a grand glacier-clad range, vaguely designated as Sel-tagh or Muz-tagh, an still awaiting exact survey, which forms, as it were, the north-western buttress of the Pamirs. Rarely have my eyes in the Himalaya, Hindukush, or Kun-lun beheld a sight more impressive than the huge glacier-furrowed wall of the Muz-tagh, as it rose before me with magnificent abruptness above the wide torrent beds of tho Muk-su, after I had cro339d the Tars-agar, our first pass from the Alai. Its boldly serrated crest-line seemed to rise well above 20,000 feet, and individual ice-peaks may reach a considerably greater height. No approximately exact elevations seem so far to have been determined with the theodolite or clinometer for this and some other prominent ranges towering above the western portio:1 of the Pamirs, and neither Afrazgul nor myself could help feeling again and again regret at the obvious considerations which precluded our attempting survey work however modest in scope. Subsequently it was a real satisfaction to come across evidence of the systematic triangulation work which the Topographical Service of Russian Turkestan has been extending over the Pamirs for some years past, and to learn that it was steadily being continued in spite of the war.
Our direct route past the Sel-tagh would have led up the valley by which the Zulum-art and Takhta-koram passes, giving access to the Kara-kul and Tanimaz drainage areas, are approached. But the floods fed by the huge Sel-darra Glacier completely close this route from spring-time till the late autumn, just as they render the track lower down the Muk-su quite impracticable for the greater part of the year.' So we were obliged to make our way first over the glacier pass, circ. 15,100 feet high, at the hood of the Kayindi Gorge. The latter proved to be completely blocked in places by ancient moraines and offered very difficult going. Here, as elsewhere, in the high mountains west of the Pamirs, evidence could be noted of glaciation having considerably receded during recent times.
Beyond the Kayindi the ground assumed a much easier Pamir-like character, and after crossing the Takhta-koram Pass, circ. 14,600 feet, we reached on August 8 the first encamp
1 This Muk-su Gorge is in places, aven during winter, too difficult for laden animals. To find it Actually marked in & recent cartographical raprezentation as traversed by the ancient silk trade route seemed an iilustration of th risks which b33et the work o the historical geographer, when it has to be done solely in the study.
