IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.7 |
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Citation Information
YOUNGHUSBAND, GROMBTCHEVSKIY, DAUVERGNE, DUNMORE, AND OTHERS.
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exploring the course of that river from its source downwards. Younghusband went two marches down the river to Dora. The mountains on both sides he estimated at 21,000 and 2 2,000 feet.
Thence he continued S. W. over the Aghil-davan from where he could see the great watershed of the Mus-tagh and an immense glacier going down to the north. He estimated the Aghil-davan at i 6,000 or 17,000 feet. The appearance of the Mus-tagh he found »extremely bold and rugged as they rise in a succession of needle peaks like hundreds of Matterhorns collected together, but the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and all the Swiss Mountains would have been several hundred feet below me, while these mountains rose up in solemn grandeur thousands of feet above me.»
The descent goes down to the Shaksgam River, which was previously unknown to geographers. It is a tributary to the Yarkand River, but nearly equal in volume. It comes down from the main Kara-korum Range and flows N. N. W. He followed it down for a day to the point where it is joined by the Sarpo Laggo stream which comes from the glaciers of the Mus-tagh Pass. A few miles up the valley he came in sight of the peak K 2, 28,250 feet high.
From Suget-jangal in the valley of the said river, he went up to the foot of the great Mus-tagh Glacier. He went up the eastern side of the glacier till it was joined by another glacier from the left.
The old Mus-tagh Pass had been out of use for 3o or 4o years on account of the accumulation of ice upon it. A new pass was found some short distance to the west; no European had crossed either of them, but GODWIN-AusTEN, in 1861, came very near the summit of the new pass, from the south.
Younghusband forced the old Mus-tagh Pass and from its height had a most dangerous descent to the Kashmir side over nothing but ice, forming slopes and perpendicular steps, where a rope had to be used. This was probably the most difficult and dangerous achievement so far undertaken in these mountains.
The next day he came down upon the Baltoro Glacier, which had been visited by Godwin-Austen in 1862. From Askoli on the Braldo River, Younghusband made an excursion up the Punmah Glacier to the camping-ground of Skinmang, where he was stopped by a glacier »which had rolled down from the pass». He found out that in the last 4 or 5 years the mass of ice had greatly increased. Over Skardo he finally reached Rawal-pindi.
An important discovery made by Younghusband during this journey is the one he describes in the following words:
I had now discovered that between the Kuen-lun Range and the main watershed which divides the rivers of Turkestan from those flowing to India, and which is sometimes called the Mustagh Range, and sometimes the Karakorum , there lies a subsidiary range, over which leads the Aghil Pass, which I had just crossed. Hayward and the members of the Forsyth Mission, when mapping the course of the Yarkand River, had made the
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