110 THROUGH THE GEL DEFILE CHAP. VII.
with snowy heights gleaming up side gorges, I was to be reminded of the very different region that awaited me eastwards. Heavy yellowish clouds overspread the narrow bit of sky, visible between the mountains, and soon the tail end of a duststorui wafted from the eastern plains swept up the valley. The night, too, was warm for this elevation.
On the morning of the 25th we had to cross to the left of the tossing river a little below the spot of our camp, known as Ilegorum. The river is compressed there by mighty rocks to a width of some 45 feet, and the chasm is spanned by a wooden bridge 6 feet broad, quite a creditable specimen, I thought, of Chinese engineering. Tlie sides were protected by a substantial railing, and the whole painted bright yellow. The opposite bank for more than a mile further down was formed by a high and precipitous wall of rock wholly impassable to man or beast. After some three miles we recrossed by a similar bridge to the right bank, and could have continued our march there with ease had it not been that the bridge across the swollen glacier-stream from a side-valley to the south had been washed away. The stream was wholly unfordable, and it was necessary to climb up for some three miles to the mouth of the huge Koksel glacier from which it issues. It was a trying detour, for the whole valley is blocked by enormous old terminal moraines. When at last the present end of the glacier was reached, it was with difficulty that we dragged up the ponies to the top of that mass of ice rising in a bank of at least 150 feet above the river. It was fortunately thickly coated with glacier mud and detritus, and in half an hour we had safely got the first pony across. From the eastern side moraine the glacier could be seen stretching away for miles up the valley to the slopes of high peaks which were enveloped in clouds. Subsequent surveying showed that the highest summit of this mountain mass is identical with the ice-clad Koksel or Sarguluk Peak (23,470 feet), which rises prominently at the salient angle of the great range north of
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