48o SEARCH FOR THE YANGI DAWAN CH. XCVI
by Johnson's route north of the watershed. A reference to Map ii. will explain details.
But the view which most impressed me by its vastness extended to the south. There the eye ranged across the valley of Haji Langar to the great dead upland basins we had skirted, and to a seemingly endless vista of barren mountains beyond. On this succession of ranges the crest - lines seemed only at rare points to exceed our altitude, and thus it was likely that those farthest away to the south send their drainage to the Indus. The world appeared to shrink strangely from a point where my eyes could, as it were, link the Taklamakan with the Indian Ocean. It was a fit place for closing the exploratory work of this long journey ; and the difficulties we had overcome, almost against hope, on this final climb only heightened my elation.
Even now, when looking back from a distance of time and sad experience, I can understand why the mind's feeling of triumph at the successful completion of our task let me forget what I owed to the body. This claimed rest and refreshment after the exhausting fatigues we had gone through ; but there was too much work to be done. The plane-table was set up first, and it took time before, by a careful identification of previously sighted peaks south and of triangulated points supplied in Indian Survey tables, we could definitely fix and check our position. Then the spurs and valleys revealed northward had to be examined closely in order that we might correctly determine their relation to the previously explored orography of this region.
It is only thus that I obtained the data which finally convinced me that the glacier below us belonged to the feeders of the Panaz Darya, an important affluent of the Kara-kash, which Ram Singh had crossed in 1906. The necessity of specially guiding the plane-table work of Lal Singh, to whom the northern slopes of this part of the Kun-lun were quite new, delayed the start on my own photographic work. This, again, took much time, owing to the bitter cold and the deep snow, in which it was very difficult to secure the stability and correct levelling of the camera requisite for a panoramic series.
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