I took a pony to ride myself whenever it was possible to do so.
On September 12 we made our start. The first march was easy enough, leading up the broad pebbly bed of the Oprang River. Up one of the gorges to the south we caught a magnificent view of the great peak K.2, twenty-eight thoilsand two hundred and seventy-eight feet high, and we halted for the night at a spot from which a view both of K.2 and of the Gusherbrum peaks, four of which are over twenty-six thousand feet, were visible. On the following day our difficulties really began. The first was the great glacier which we had seen from the Aghil Pass ; it protruded right across the valley of the Oprang River, nearly touching the cliffs on the right bank ; but fortunately the river had kept a way for itself, by continually washing away the ice at the end of the glacier, and so by taking our ponies through the water, which was filled with blocks of ice, we were able to get round the end of the glacier, a great wall of ice of one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high. This glacier runs down from the Gusherbrum Mountains, and is about one and a half mile broad at the end ; the central portion is a mass of pure ice-peaks, and the view looking up it is very fine, with the sea of ice beneath, and the Gusherbrum in the distance towering up to a height of over twenty-six thousand feet.
The passage round the end of the glacier was not unattended with danger, for the stream was swift and strong ; and on my own pony I had to reconnoitre very carefully for points where it was shallow enough to cross, while there was also some fear of fragments from the great ice-wall falling down on the top of us when we were passing along close under the cliffs of ice which formed the end of the glacier. After getting round this obstacle, we entered a gravel plain some three-quarters of a mile broad, and were then encountered by another glacier running across the valley of the Oprang River. This proved
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