hardships they had to suffer on the raids, and the little benefit they got from them. Everything they took, they said, had to be handed over to the chief, and all the raids were organized by him. If they were suspected of not having given up all they had, or if the chief wanted to squeeze more taxes out of them, they were stripped naked and kept for hours in a freezing glacier stream. They were in abject terror of their chief, and during their conversation they were constantly discussing the probabilities of their heads being cut off. If they did this or that they would lose their heads, and they would illustrate the action by drawing the edge of their hands across their necks. They wore always a grave, hard look, as of men who lived in a constant struggle for existence, and were too much engrossed by it to think of any of the levities of life. I afterwards found that down in the lower valleys of Hunza the people are fond of polo and dancing, but these I first met were men from the upper valleys, where the struggle is harder, and where they were frequently turned out for raiding expeditions.
On the following day, October 15, we at last crossed the Shimshal Pass, for which I had been seeking during so many weeks. The ascent was steep for a mile and a half, but not really difficult, and afterwards the road gradually ascends to the pass, which is a palnir, as the Kanjutis called it, that is, a nearly level plain or very shallow and wide trough between high mountains on either side. A mile from the summit we passed a collection of shepherds' huts, used in the summer ; at the summit, which was fourteen thousand seven hundred feet above sea-level, there were two small lakes. There was no snow at all on the pass, which was a most unexpectedly easy one. We had been anticipating struggles with glaciers and climbs up rocky precipices, but here was a pass which we • could have ridden ponies over if we had wanted to do so.
This Shimshal Pass forms one of those remarkable depressions which are here and there met with in these mountains. Up
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