| out to each man of the escort. Shortly after ten o'clock at night, after a rough scramble over the rocky boulders which strewed the valley bottom, we reached our camping-ground at Suget Jangal. From about a mile above this a large glacier could be seen flowing from the westward down a wide valley, at the head of which I thought might be the Shimshal Pass. My Kirghiz guide assured me that the Shimshal Pass did not lie there. But guides are not infallible. On our maps the Shimshal Pass was marked very nearly where the head of the glacier would be ; and though I knew this was only from conjecture, for no European had yet been anywhere near the Shimshal Pass, I thought I would just have a look, and if I was wrong, as I indeed proved to be, I could come back and meekly follow this Kirghiz guide wherever he chose to take me. I therefore left the heavy baggage under the charge of one Gurkha and a Balti coolie, and set out for the exploration Of the glacier, with twelve ponies carrying supplies and fuel for twelve days for my party and escort. On September 23 we left Suget Jangal, and by midday were again on a glacier. We had rather a rough march up the glacier that day, but not so bad as on the way to the Saltoro Pass. The way to attack these glaciers is evidently this : first to keep along the side of the glacier, on the lateral moraine, close to the mountainside ; you here get some very fair going, though also, at times, some nasty pieces, where great, rough, sharp boulders are heaped one on the other, as at the mouth of a quarry. Presently the glacier closes in on the mountain-side, and you have then to take a favourable opportunity of plunging into the centre of the glacier, and ascending the part of it which is best covered with gravel moraine. Some very careful steering is here necessary to keep clear of the crevasses ; and the ponies, and men too, often have a hard time of it, trying to keep their legs in ascending slopes where the gravel barely |
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