CHAP. IV.] APPROACH TO TASHKURGHAN 69
(mumbaz, where I pitched my camp by the side of the river now grey and swollen with the water of glacier streams, it was distinctly warm until the wind began to blow up the valley.
Next morning we were ready for an early start, for the neighbourhood of Tashkurghan and such comforts as it could offer was an attraction for my people no less than myself. Murtagh-Ata, still so distant, showed itself in fascinating clearness during the early hours of the morning. Its grand dome of ice filled the vista behind the north end of the valley. After a few miles' ride over a stony level ` Dasht,' my guide, Rashid Beg, the Ming-bashi (" head of a thousand men ") of Tashkurghan, broke his usual silence, and indicated a white spot in the far distance as the goal of our march. It was the Fort of Tashkurghan, rising over the western bank of the river. Then I reached a strip of delightfully green sward stretching along the irrigation - channel which carries the water of the river to the fields of Tughlanshahr, the collection of hamlets opposite Tashkurghan. For miles the path winds along it, and ultimately reaches the fertile tract where the water spreads itself over carefully-terraced fields.
Whether it was the bright surroundings or the historical interests associated with the place, the sight of the walls of Tashkurghan rising higher and higher above the flat filled me with emotion. I knew that they did not hide imposing structures or special comforts. Yet they marked the completion of a considerable part of my journey and my entry upon the ground which was to occupy my researches. The swollen state of the river prevented the use of the nearest route, and I had to descend almost to the foot of the spur which projects into the valley below Tashkurghan from the eastern range, before a practicable ford was reached. Even here, where the river spreads in about half a dozen branches over the flat meadow land, the crossing was no easy matter. For the water reached almost up to the saddles, and flowed with great rapidity. At last, however, though wet to the
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