448 GORGES OF POLUR AND ZAI LI K CH. XCII
and other necessaries. Fortunately we were able to secure among them eight or nine porters, without whom it would have been quite impossible to transport our indispensable baggage and instruments over the very difficult ground before us. Our queer guide Pasa, the yak-hunter, had told me that the tracks by which we were to make our way to the glacier sources of the Yurung-kash would be practicable only for men and possibly donkeys. So I had the baggage cut down to the barest minimum, leaving everything the ten donkeys with us could not carry to be taken back by the ponies to our Ulugh-köl depot.