above, I knew that these animals must get down to the river to drink some way or other, and that where they could go we could go also. I therefore went back to these tracks, carefully followed them up, and was relieved to find they led down a practicable " shoot " in the cliff. It was very steep and rocky, but by unloading the ponies, and putting one man on to lead each in front and two others to hold on to the tail behind,. we managed to let the ponies down one by one, and after a good deal of labour found ourselves, bag and baggage, on the edge of a river, which in some ways might be considered the main branch of the Yarkand River.
This tributary, which the Baltis with me called the Shaksgam, but which the Kirghiz seems to know as the Oprang, was previously unknown. It rises among the glaciers of the main watershed. Two years later I followed it down to its junction. with the other branch of the Yarkand River.
Another geographical point of some importance I had now discovered was, 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 Karakoram, 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 tributaries on the southern side run directly down from this Mustagh or Karakoram Range ; but this was an error. The tributaries which they met with flow from the intermediate range, and that and the Oprang River lie in between this northern branch of the Yarkand River, which they explored, and the Mustagh Mountains.
A word now as to the proper name for the great watershed between Turkestan and India. Why call it the Karakoram ? Karakoram means " black gravel," and no more inappropriate name could be imagined for a range of the highest snowy peaks
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