attained caused me neither headache nor any other symptoms of mountain sickness, yet the rarity of the air necessarily imposed slow progress and frequent though short halts. The wind grew stronger as the day advanced, and brought passing showers of snow. Yet more troublesome was the snow which the force of the wind swept up at times from the slope before us. Shortly before midday I reached a point where a few dry rocks at the edge of the spur protruded from the snow. They offered a convenient spot for a halt and refreshment. Immediately below the nearly perpendicular cliffs there stretched the contorted icy surface of the Yambulak Glacier. Contrary to my expectation, the altitude of close on 19,000 feet which we must have reached by this time interfered in no way with my appetite.
After another short snow squall had passed we resumed our climb, but the Sub-Surveyor and Ajab Khan began to complain of headache and general lassitude. Bichlorate of potash tabloids, with which after Dr. Bellew's advice I had provided myself, proved of little avail, and by 1.30 p.m. Ram Singh had to remain behind. The wind had by this time driven away all clouds that hung over the ranges west and north, and he was thus able to check his plane-table work by rays to a number of distant peaks previously sighted or triangulated. Twenty minutes later Ajab Khan, skilled mountaineer as he is, fell out and received permission to descend. There remained now Wali Muhammad and Ghun, my two Hunza levies, and they without a word of complaint steadily plodded on with me. The snow became still deeper, and the mist that settled on the peaks above us showed clearly that a further ascent would offer no chance of a close survey of the summits. A change in the weather seemed also to threaten, and after due deliberation I fixed upon the buttress of the ridge just before me as the final object of the climb. By 2.30 p.m. I had reached its top and settled down by the side of the precipitous rock wall descending to the glacier.
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