| | 562 JOURNEY OF BENEDICT GOES mules went laine, and the weary servants wanted to let them go, but after all they were got to follow the others. And so, after a journey of twenty days, they reached the province of SARCIL, where they found a number of hamlets near together. They halted there two days to rest the horses, and then in two days more reached the foot of the mountain called CIECIALITH. It was covered deep with snow, and during the ascent many were frozen to death, and our brother himself barely escaped, for they were altogether six days in the snow here. At last they reached TANGIETAR, a place belonging to the Kingdom of Cascar. Here Isaac the Armenian fell off the bank of a great river into the water, and lay as it were dead for some eight hours till Benedict's exertions at last brought him to. In fifteen days more they reached the town of IAK0NICH, and the roads were so bad that six of our brother's horses died of fatigue. After five days more our Benedict going on by himself in advance of the caravan reached the capital, which is called HIARCHAN, and sent back horses to help on his party with necessaries for his comrades. And so they also arrived not long after safe at the capital, with bag and baggage, in November of the same year 1603.1 1 The places named in the preceding paragraphs continue to present some difficulty, but in a somewhat less degree than those lately encountered. The Tangi-i.Badakhshan, Straits or Defiles of Badakhshan," I should look for along the Oxus in Darwaz and Shagnan, where the paths appear, from what Wood heard, to be much more difficult and formidable than that which he followed, crossing from the Kokcha at Fyzabad to the Upper Oxus in Wakhan, where again the latter river runs in a comparatively open valley. The title is well illustrated by Marco Polo's expressions : "En cest regne (de Balacian) a maint estroit pas moult mauvois et si fort que il n'ont doute de nullui" (Pauthier's Ed., p. 121). Ciarciunar is, I suppose, unquestionably the Persian CHAR CHINAR, " The four plane-trees." This (Cha,rchina,r) is actually the name of an island in the Lake of Kashmir, formerly conspicuous for its four great plane-trees (see Forster's Journey). Serpanil, desolate and without human habitation, I take to be probably SIR-IPAMIR, The head or top of Pamir," the celebrated plateau from which the Oxus, Jaxartes, Rivers of Yarkand and Kashgar, and the Gilgit branch of the Indus derive their headwaters. The anomalous name |
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