Innermost Asia : vol.2 / Page 354 (Color Image)

0354	Innermost Asia : vol.2

most hamlets of Rōshān were all excellent cragsmen and quite experts in building *rafaks* or ledges
of brushwood and stones along otherwise impassable precipices. It was fully five hours before
a tolerably safe track had been made higher up and we had crossed the worst of those treacherous
scarps (Fig. 375) ; yet the direct distance was scarcely more than a mile. At last we reached the
head of the inlet, lined with half-submerged thickets of birch-trees and juniper. Ascending the
valley amidst fine groves of trees for a couple of miles and then crossing what looked like an old
terminal moraine, we arrived at a widening stretch where cultivation had been resumed, since
the earthquake, by six Rōshānī families. Their smiling fields of barley and oats lay at an elevation
of about 11,000 feet and some 500 feet above the level of the lake as it stood then. Yet even here
dread was felt of the continued rise of its waters.

Ascent to
Langar pass. During a day's halt at this pleasant spot our hillmen succeeded in improving the track above
the Yerkh inlet sufficiently to bring, somehow or other, their sure-footed ponies across. Accordingly
on August 19th we moved up the valley to the south, which contains at its bottom a succession of
small lakes formed by glacier action between old moraines. Small hanging glaciers showed at
the heads of the side valleys on either side. The route had never been surveyed and had come into
use only since that across the Marjanai pass between Sāréz and the Alichur Pāmīr had been blocked
by the newly formed lake. As our route led continuously over old moraines and boulder-strewn
fans, progress was troublesome. But fortunately on arrival at Ushinch, about 11 miles farther
up, where the valley bottom widens in view of an amphitheatre of ice-crowned peaks to the south,
we were met by fresh Kirghiz transport kindly sent by the Commandant of Pamirski Post. This
opportune help made it possible to push up the valley, which now turned to SE. and widened
into a Pāmīr-like expanse. After passing three more small lakes we camped at an elevation of
about 14,400 feet.

Crossing to
Shughnān
side. Next morning, ascending first to SE. and then turning east, we reached after a march of
5 miles the Langar pass, forming an almost level talus-covered saddle at about 15,400 feet. A large
hanging glacier to the NW. of the pass sends its drainage partly to the small lake of Emin-kōl,
which we had come to before reaching the pass, and partly to the Langar-kōl on the other side.
The descent into the Langar valley was easy and brought us mostly over gentle grassy slopes
to the stone huts known as Langar. There we camped at an elevation of about 12,300 feet, after
a total march of 20 miles.

SECTION IV.—BY THE ALICHUR AND GREAT PĀMĪR

Route along
Yeshil-kōl. Our route from Langar turned eastwards to the Yeshil-kōl and Alichur Pāmīr, and as these
as well as the Great Pāmīr to the south have been often visited and described,¹ the account of my
rapid passage may be brief. Some points of special interest must, however, be noticed. On
ascending from Langar the easy spur which separates the mouth of that valley from the western
end of the Yeshil-kōl, an excellent view offered over the head of the Ghund valley leading down
through Shughnān. Looking across its wide floor and the grass-covered easy slopes which flank it,
we were able fully to appreciate the advantages offered by it for direct communication from the
Pāmīrs westwards to the Oxus. It is true that the modern Russian cart-road which leads from
Pamirski Post down to Shughnān leaves the Alichur Pāmīr above the Yeshil-kōl and does not enter
the Ghund valley until more than thirty miles below the exit of the Ghund river from the lake.
But the route which from the Alichur Pāmīr keeps to the Yeshil-kōl and then enters the Ghund

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Citation Information

OCR Text

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books