halting here for a day to collect supplies, I left on August 5, and marched up the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir, intending to proceed to Gilgit by the Baroghil or some other pass leading into Chitral territory. A considerable amount of rain fell at this time of year, and places which two years before I had seen dried up and parched by the November frosts, were now fresh with the summer green, and grass was plentiful.
All this time reports kept coming in that a small Russian force had entered the Pamirs, and proclaimed them Russian territory, and at the head of the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir I found several families of Kirghiz who had fled before the Russians. I crossed the Wakhijrui Pass, fifteen thousand six hundred feet, an easy pass, with a small lake on the summit, and the surface of the ground carpeted with gentians, edelweis, and yellow poppies. I then descended into the basin of the River Oxus, and passed along the Pamir-i-Wakhan, uninhabited at this season, but tenanted in the winter by Wakhis, to Bozai-Gumbaz, which I reached on August w. So much has since been written about this place, that people might easily imagine it to be a town or large village, whereas the only building on the spot is the tomb of a murdered Kirghiz chieftain, and the only inhabitants occasional nomadic Wakhis. Here I found a party of ten Cossacks encamped. They formed a guard over the stores which had been left here by the main party of Russians, which had gone on to reconnoitre in the direction of the Baroghil Pass. There was no officer with this party of Cossacks at Bozai-Gumbaz, so I halted here till the officers returned, as I was anxious to meet them. Among the Cossacks of this party I recognized one who had been with Captain Grombtchevsky in 1889, and was able to show him a photograph of our combined parties which the Russian officer had taken, and of which he had sent me a copy from St. Petersburg, together with a very kind invitation to visit him in Margillan.
On August 13 the reconnoitring party returned. As I
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