failed to induce the men to offer their services for a short visit to the mouth of the Chomsha Valley, and when asked to procure fresh yaks stoutly maintained that there were none. So there was nothing for it but to keep him under watch and to arrange for his despatch to the Amban's Ya-mên. The half-crazy Taghliks, who previously seemed inclined to assault their so-called head-man, now threatened to starve by his side and clamoured to be sent also to Khotan. But the threat was not one to impress me greatly, and the interposition of the Pisha elders, who did not much relish seeing their crops despoiled by unscrupulous neighbours, soon cleared them away from the vicinity of my camp.
Apart from the clue which I thus obtained while at Pisha, but which want of local help, and still more of time, did not allow me to follow up there and then, my four days' stay there fulfilled all I had looked for. The little meadow by the side of the Pisha stream, in the middle of a broad open valley about 9000 feet above the sea, proved an ideal working place. The slopes of the reddish sandstone ridges which line the valley were bare enough to suggest the desert, but there was a narrow yet continuous belt of cultivation stretching along its bottom to give relief to the eye. Above the south-eastern end of the valley there towered in grand isolation the ice-covered massif of K. 5, only some twenty miles away as the crow flies ; and, in spite of the dust raised by the strong wind blowing each afternoon and evening, I could daily feast my eyes on its noble form crowned by the Phrygian cap of its highest peak, nearly 24,000 feet above the sea. I could not have wished for a more suitable place for writing my paper on the photo-theodolite panoramas of the Pamirs and of the rugged Alpine regions just revisited.
Short walks in the evening took me along the carefully irrigated oat-fields which occupy every level stretch of ground in the valley, and visits paid to the modest homesteads scattered along them at wide intervals brought me into friendly touch with several of the leading cultivators. Such wealth as they possessed was derived mainly from their flocks of sheep and yaks. Yet it was sufficient to
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