to this point the Mustagh Range is lofty and rugged in the extreme. Everywhere it is covered with snow and ice, and peaks of great height rise along it. There are within the neighbourhood of the Shimshal Pass many of these peaks, twenty-three and twenty-four thousand feet in height. But here it suddenly drops down to fifteen thousand feet, and the summits on the northern side of the pass, though still lofty, are smooth and rounded instead of sharp and ragged. The explanation that suggests itself to me is that the mountains on the south side of the pass are of more recent upheaval than those on the north, that the latter have been longer exposed to the wearing action of the snow and ice, and that consequently peaks which may formerly have been as lofty and rugged as `those still standing to the south have now become worn and smoothed down. And though the watershed of the Mustagh Range runs across the pass and away in a northerly direction through the crests of these rounded mountains, I think that it would not be right to call this the main axis, for that, as it seems to me, runs away in a more westerly direction from the south side of the Shimshal Pass, and passes along a few miles above Hunza. This line passes through a series of peaks, more than one of which are over twenty-five thousand feet in height, and looked at either on the spot or on the map this appears to be the true axis of the range, while the watershed to the north seems merely a subsidiary offshoot.
Descending by a steep zigzag from the Shimshal Pass, we encamped near a second collection of shepherds' huts, to which the Hunza men come in the summer with their flocks. There were patches of good grass both here and on the flat surface of the pass, but no trees, and only low dwarf bushes. On the next morning, leaving my party behind here, I went on with a few men to examine the country a little further in the direction of Hunza, though it was my intention to return over the Shimshal Pass, and go up on to the Pamirs, before finally
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