Government, and thirteen days after the incident had occurred, far away on the Pamirs though it was, the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg had made a protest to the Russian Government, the upshot of which was that the Russian Ambassador in London apologized to Lord Salisbury for the illegal action of Colonel Yonoff, and the Russian Government has now declared, in the Pamir Agreement, that Bozai-Gumbaz, the place which Colonel Yonoff had stated to be Russian territory, is beyond the sphere of Russian influence.
Meanwhile I recrossed the Wakhijrui Pass, and encamped for some weeks on the far side of it, at the mouth of the Kukturuk valley. This is immediately opposite the Kilik Pass into Hunza, and as these people of Hunza were showing signs of hostility to us, which a few months later resulted in the sending of an expedition against them ; and as, moreover, they committed a raid on a Kirghiz encampment only ten miles below the spot where I was myself encamped, I had to take turns with my Pathan servants to keep watch during the night, till an escort under Lieutenant J. M. Stewart arrived from Gilgit for my protection. For six weeks I remained at this place, situated over fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. Even at the end of August there were sharp frosts at night, and the water in my basin would be coated over with ice in the morning, and by the end of September the thermometer went down to zero Fahrenheit. The patches of grass, so green and fresh in the summer months, now died down and withered, and the hills and valleys became bare and bleak as the winter cold closed on them. The mountains in that part were mostly rounded and uninteresting—ugly heaps of rock and earth, with no trace of beauty to attract attention, and life in Kukturuk was in the highest degree monotonous till Lieutenant Stewart arrived.
At last, on October 4, Lieutenant Davison rejoined me. He had been treated in an even more cavalier manner by the
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