we were gaining elevation, the cold growing sharper ; water carried in ice-cakes to provide the dry camps ; fuel in precious bundles on camel-back, two stretches of four days each being wholly without vegetation. When we mounted the great Karakoram Pass we were eighteen thousand three hundred feet above the sea, the fourth time we had exceeded eighteen thousand feet since leaving Polu. The route, which is often designated by naming this pass, is abominable, but the divide itself, while rough and cold, is not perilous save when snow-covered. We crossed without difficulty, but were reminded of the true merit underlying the reputation given to the spot, by an almost unbelievable number of horse-skeletons which blaze the way for more than a day's march on either side. Where the death-harvest had been most rich, they could be counted a hundred to the quarter mile. Legs ridiculously in the air, heads absurdly ducked between legs, backs broken, backs curved, necks defiantly lurched upward, rampant, bodies half set up on haunches, every possible fantastic position was seen, as resultants of three forces —rigor mortis, gravitation, and vulture. Thus in regions uninhabitable, death remains the only evident monument of the transient life that ventures here.
Throughout the vast length of the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges Nature seems to have raised these tremendous masses that here, wrapped in spotless white, she might sleep undisturbed by her inquisitive progeny, her enfant terrible, restless man. But in vain. Children of the desert, children of the delta, led by love of gain, led by lust of war, for
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