many, however, can find room in the tiny hut; the rest have to camp as best they can behind a couple of mud walls without any roof or behind walls improvised of sacking. We got to the top by 10.30, but it was 12.30 before the caravan had successfully negotiated the ascent.
Viewed from above, the glacier extends far to the NE, framed by two seemingly unbroken gigantic mountains. The glacier seems to form a very extensive triangle with a veritable conglomeration of summits, eminences and depressions. Here and there you see a smoothly polished surface either white or sea-green or greyish-black. Mostly, however, the ice is a dull and impure white. At a considerable distance the mountains appear almost to close in on each other. Water boiled at a temperature of 89.52°. The weather was lovely. The sun was as hot as in summer and the fairly high S wind did not trouble us much. We left at i 2.30 after recompensing the labourers for their heavy work by a suitable tip and our no less welcome supply of' wood. The men receive i lan and 3 tcheraks of wheaten flour a month from the Chinese authorities and spend alternate months on the mountain and at Kuna Shahr, where they are given other employment. For this miserable pay, slightly supplemented by the pittance that stingy Sart merchants give them as a tip, they wear themselves out over this hard work and life.
Rakhimjanoff's illness had developed into high fever and he could scarcely keep his seat in the saddle. There was nothing for it, however, but to avail ourselves of the comparatively fine weather and try to reach Khan Jailik. The read winds in every possible direction in this muddle of icy pinnacles, short ridges and open crevices. The main direction, however, is NE. No sooner have you surmounted one than you encounter another, often crossing steep, slippery paths, on which the horses slip and cannot find a footing. In some places the road is intersected by a crevice, several fathoms deep, with smoothly polished sides. On primitive paths of large stones, sometimes of one stone, you ride across these
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