476 SEARCH FOR THE YANGI DAWAN CH. XCVI
watershed. It was my only chance to clear up a number of interesting questions which the orography of the ice-clad spurs south and south-west of Karanghu-tagh still presented, and which were made particularly puzzling by certain features of Johnson's route sketch. Nor did there seem any other hope of linking up our recent surveys with our previous mapping from the north side, and for fixing our position accurately with reference to triangulated peaks, two of which I knew ought to be looked for quite near our valley.
So I determined to make the ascent on the morrow if the weather would permit. Besides Musa, the Surveyor's hardy follower, four of the Kirghiz were to accompany Lal Singh and myself, and they all readily agreed. Accustomed as these Kirghiz are to hunting yaks in glacier-filled valleys, they fully appreciated the use of the roping I indicated as a necessary precaution against crevasses. An icy wind from the west had brought snow showers in the evening. But the sky was perfectly clear when I rose before 4 A.M., and though a restless night, due to an attack of colic, made me feel somewhat below par, I decided not to miss this rare chance for survey work. There was, in fact, only the choice between making the ascent that day or abandoning the attempt at the watershed altogether ; for there was absolutely nothing for the yaks to eat, and after a second or third day's fast they would not have been equal to giving that help on the high snow-beds which the Kirghiz insisted upon if they themselves were to carry up our instruments. So we started soon after 5 A.M., all of us mounted on yaks.
After less than a mile's scramble over piled-up boulders, we reached the narrow snout of the glacier and then took
to a huge moraine on the west from which the ice had
receded. The cold was so bitter, and a light layer of frozen snow had made the moraine débris so slippery, that I soon preferred to climb ahead on foot. On our right was an ice wall fantastically fissured, and rising in places
to an almost perpendicular height of over i 50 feet : on our left the masses of rock were often impracticable. But dodging between them we reached by 8 A.M. the point
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