taken place, as Ney Elias assumes , on the Suget - davan. That it cannot have been at the present Daulet Bek-öldi, as Bellew believes, is obvious, for this place is only two ordinary marches from the foot of the Saser-davan. To me, Daulet Beköldi was not pointed out at exactly the same place as where Bellew has it. Bellew thinks that the journey with the dying Khan was accomplished over the Dapsang heights.
On the difficulties on his journey back from Ladak, Mirza Haidar writes, : »I moved off finally, with twenty-seven men. [We suffered much] from want of supplies for the journey — from the weakness of the beasts of burden, from the difficulties of the road and from the cold. For although it was now the season of Virgo, the cold was so severe that at a place we came to called Kara Kuram, as the sun sank, the river (which is a large one) froze over so completely that wherever one might break the ice, not a drop of water was forthcoming.» Thus they continued to the spot where the road to Badakhshan branched off. From this description Shaw concludes that Mirza Haidar did not consider that he crossed a range here. This is right, for a native will never consider the Kara-korum Pass as being situated in a range. It is on a comparatively very low ridge placed on a wide open barren country, extremely cold and with much »dam-giri», or shortness of breath.
In Mirza Haidar's account, the historical events are of incomparably greater importance than the geography of the countries where they have taken place. Still, as we have seen from the passages quoted above, he has not neglected the geography, and he is, as far as is known, the first who has ever described the later on so famous Kara-korum road.
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