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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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it passed through a plain somsix miles long and two broad. At Dahn-i-Isligh the river is joined by two more ; streas,, the Kizil Robat coming from the south-east, and the Karasu from ,the west, both lif which pass through broad grassy valleys. The ground is very open, and may be traversed in almost every direction. Two or three miles north-east of our Camp the Great Pamir terminates, having extended for a distance of some 90 miles from Boharak.

From Dahn-i-Isligh I took a path which follows the Isligh stream, until it emerges into the Aksu plain ; this road is somewhat circuitous, and the rest of the party took a shorter line, going over a low pass, and rejoined the main stream about 16 miles from our starting point. The path I followed is rarely used by travellers; in summer it is quite impassable on account of floods. When I went down it (in April) the ice was breaking up, and travelling was somewhat dangerous, as the river had to be crossed many times. The hills on the north are very precipitous, and in places rise nearly perpendicularly to a height of some 2,000 feet above the river bed. Where the two paths unite, the valley opens, and down it a good road leads to the Aksu plain, which is crossed diagonally in a S.-E. direction. Prior to reaching our camp at Ak-tash we had much difficulty in crossing the Aksu River, which was much swollen by melting snow. On this march (37 miles in length) I had the good fortune to shoot an " Ovis Poli," the only one that has fallen to the rifles of our party.

At Ak-tash we rejoined the road we had followed on our outward journey, and returned by it, to Tashkurghgn and Yarkand making the slight variations in our route, to which I have already alluded.

It appears from the foregoing narrative that although the name Pamir has been inaccurately employed as a generic term covering the whole of the elevated mass lying between the Hindu Kûsh and the mountains of Khokand, yet it is rightly applied to some of the steppes which occupy a large portion of this region. These steppes would appear to be a series of broad undulating grassy valleys, formed on the surface of an elevated plain, by lofty ridges running more or less parallel to the equator. The general slope of the plateau is from east to west. Its eastern portion is gently undulating, and comparatively flat, while its western edge merges into spurs, which slope down gradually to the west, and are separated by bold and precipitous defiles. On the east the Pamir steppes are bounded by a transverse ridge, which has been appropriately termed the Pamir range by Pundit Manphul. This ridge runs in a direction from south-south-west to north-north-east and is the true watershed

To the east of the Pamir range there is an extensive plateau, which stretches from the

Ls/between Eastern and Western Turkestan; at the Neza Tash Pass where we crossed it, the

watershed is very clearly defined ; the ridge was seen trending as far north as latitude 38° 15' ; it appeared to sink gradually, and I was informed by Kirghiz that it eventually subsided to the level of the Kizil-art plains a little short of the Great Karakul (lake) in which vicinity a difference of level of a few feet may probably determine the flow of water, either into the Sea of

Aral in Western Turkestan, or into the semi• ~rietal lake of Lop, on the   -t (444440.0

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urtagh range of the Himalaya mountains up to the South Khokand range—the Trans-Alai of Fedchenko—in the parallel of 39°. Portions of it are designated in order from south to north as the Tagh4umbâsh Pa`m14„ the Sarikol or Tashkurghan valley, the Tagharma, and the Kizil-art plains. This plateau is in turn bounded on the east by the range to which Hayward gave the name of the Kizil-art, the name by which it is known to the inhabitants of Kashghar, and which runs nearly parallel to Pandit Manphul's Pamir range. Fedchenko has questioned the existence of the Kizil-art range in the following words :—" Hayward's researches seem to point to a meridional range to the west of Kashgar, but he only saw these mountains in the distance, and covered entirely with winter snow, which is very misleading as regards direction. Therefore his statement regarding a meridional Kizil-art range with steep easterly declivities appears to me very untrustworthy. When you have the ends of a, chain facing you they appear, when covered with snow and seen en face to form a consecutive chain running in a direction perpendicular to the line of sight of the beholder." But all the information I have obtained decidedly corroborates Hayward's views, which are also shared by Mr. Shaw. I have every reason to believe that the magnificent line of snowy peaks which is viewed from Kashghar, constitutes a meridional.chain of mountains, instead of being composed

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