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CHAP. XXXII. p. 170.   WAKHAN.   37

They belonged, so the Colonel explained to me afterwards, to a

sort of militia drafted from the local population of the Badakhshan

valleys and Wakhan into the regiments permanently echeloned

as frontier guards along the Russian border on the Oxus. Apart

from the officers, the proportion of true Pathans among them was

slight. Yet I could well believe from all I saw and heard, that,

properly led and provided for, these sturdy Iranian hillmen might

give a good account of themselves. Did not Marco Polo speak

of the people of ` Badashan ' as ` valiant in war ' and of the men

of ` Vokhan ' as gallant soldiers ? " (Ruins of Desert Cathay,

I., p. 66.)

XXXII., pp. 17o seq.

In Chap. III., pp. 64-66, of his Serindia, Sir Aurel Stein has

the following on Marco Polo's account of Wakhan

" After Wu-k'ung's narrative of his journey the Chinese

sources of information about the Pāmīrs and the adjoining

regions run dry for nearly a thousand years. But that the routes

leading across them from Wakhän retained their importance also

in Muhammedan times is attested by the greatest media val

travellers, Marco Polo. I have already, in Ancient Khotan

[pp. 41 seq.], discussed the portion of his itinerary which deals with

the journey across the Pämīrs to ` the kingdom of Cascar ' or

Käshgar, and it only remains here to note briefly what he tells us

of the route by which he approached them from Badakhshan :

` In leaving Badashan you ride twelve days between east and

north-east, ascending a river that runs through land belonging to

a brother of the Prince of Badashan, and containing a good many

towns and villages and scattered habitations. The people are

Mahommetans, and valiant in war. At the end of those twelve

days you come to a province of no great, size, extending indeed

no more than three days' journey in any direction, and this is

called VOKHAN. The people worship Mahommet, and they have

a peculiar language. They are gallant soldiers, and they have a

chief whom they call NONE, which is as much as to say Count,

and they are liegemen to the Prince of Badashan.' [Polo, I.,

pp. 170-171.]

" Sir Henry Yule was certainly right in assuming that ` the

river along which Marco travels from Badakhshan is no doubt the

upper stream of the Oxus, locally known as the Panja. . . . It is

true that the river is reached from Badakhshan Proper by ascending

another river (the Vardoj) and crossing the Pass of Ishkáshm,