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Innermost Asia : vol.2 |
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six palms in length. From these horns the shepherds make great bowls to eat from, and they use
the horns also to enclose folds for their cattle at night. [Messer Marco was told also that the wolves
were numerous, and killed many of those wild sheep. Hence quantities of their horns and bones
were found, and these were made into great heaps by the wayside, in order to guide travellers when
snow was on the ground.]
' The plain is called Pamier, and you ride across it for twelve days together, finding nothing
but a desert without habitations or any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with
them whatever they have need of. The region is so lofty and cold that you do not see even any
birds flying . . . ' ¹³
Accuracy of This record has rightly been called by Sir Henry Yule one of the great Venetian's ' most
M. Polo's
description. splendid anticipations of modern exploration ', and Captain John Wood's narrative ' the most
brilliant confirmation in detail of Marco's narrative '. Therefore only a few remarks need be added
to the pages in which Marco Polo's great commentator and Professor Cordier have discussed it.¹⁴
A sense of this being ' the highest place in the world ' strangely impressed me also, as my eyes,
passing the extremity of the lake (Fig. 391), turned during that day of halt towards the distant
and perfectly open vista which extended across the imperceptible watershed eastwards. The
excellence of the pasture afforded by the Great Pāmīr was attested by reports of big flocks of sheep
belonging to traders which were annually brought up from the Wakhān side. At the time of
my passage they were grazing in the side valleys descending to the lake from the north. Marco's
' wild sheep ', the Ovis Poli justly named after him, still have favourite haunts in the heights above
the lake. We met a herd of them close to the Bāsh-gumbaz pass, and on small grassy patches lower
down came upon numerous horns and bones of others which, when driven down by the winter snow
on the range, had fallen victims to wolves. During our halt Afrāz-gul's rifle promptly secured a fine
head in the Kög-ütek-jilga to the north to serve me as a souvenir.¹⁵ That halt, on August 27th,
helped also to bring home to me the truth of Marco's remark on the cold of this Pāmīr. The
minimum thermometer showed a temperature of 12° Fahr. below freezing-point, and with an icy
wind sweeping along the lake shore at 13,990 feet above sea-level, it felt bitterly cold all day in
spite of the sun shining from a speckless sky.
' Northern Apart from the interest attaching to those old travellers' accounts, my visit to the Great Pāmīr
route ' of
Kao Hsien- enabled me to gather local information throwing light on a Chinese historical record and strikingly
chih.
confirming its accuracy. In describing Kao Hsien-chih's famous expedition of A. D. 747 across
the Pāmīrs and Hindukush, the T'ang Annals specially mention the concentration of the Chinese
forces by three routes from east, west, and north upon the point on the Āb-i-Panja marked by the
present Sarhad, from which that great leader then forced his way across the Barōghil and Darkōt
passes. When previously discussing the details of this remarkable military exploit,¹⁶ I had shown
that the routes from the east and west, i. e. down and up the Āb-i-Panja valley, were clear beyond
all doubt. But of a northern route which would have brought a portion of the Chinese general's
force to Sarhad from the side of Lake Victoria no definite evidence could be traced in maps or books.
Lord Curzon, it is true, in his celebrated monograph on the Pāmīrs had with characteristic thorough-
ness noted some vague and divergent indications which pointed to a pass giving access to the
Āb-i-Panja from Lake Victoria.¹⁷ Yet he also recorded that in August 1895, ' some members of
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697
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