India, and who had never been on a snow-mountain in his life before. Now came the crisis of the journey. Davison had no map to show him the way to the Mustagh Pass, and, still worse, he had no guide. He had not been able to find a single man who had been a yard off the beaten track to Yarkand ; but he had a rough map which gave him the relative position of the Mustagh and Karakoram Passes ; so he plotted those two points on a piece of paper, and then started a prismatic compass survey, which in future he plotted out regularly on the same piece of paper, and by these means he hoped to be able to make out his way to the goal he had before him. With this intention, he followed down the stream which flows from the Karakoram Pass past Aktagh. But the further he advanced the more rugged and impracticable became the mountains which bounded in the valley in the direction of the Mustagh Pass. He could see nothing of that great snowy range which he had expected to find standing up conspicuous and distinct from all the rest, and with the Mustagh Pass forming a landmark which he could make out from any distance, and steer for without difficulty. Instead of this, he found himself shut in by rocky precipitous mountains, which forbade him following any other route but that which led down the valley he was in. He had lost three ponies on the Karakoram Pass. Two of his men now deserted with most of his supplies. But Davison still pushed on, in spite of the danger of doing so with his scanty stock of food, till—very fortunately for him—he was pulled up on account of the stream having increased so much in depth that it had become unfordable. This was at Khoja Mohammed gorge, about two marches below Chiragh Saldi. Davison tried to swim the river with a rope tied round his waist, but the stream was too strong for him. Finding it impossible to get down the valley at the time of year when the snows were melting and the rivers in flood, he reluctantly retraced his steps for a short distance and then turned north, crossed a pass (the Kokalang, if I remember
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