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0365	Innermost Asia : vol.2
極奥アジア : vol.2

CHAPTER XXVI

IN THE REGION OF THE UPPER OXUS

Section I.—OLD REMAINS IN WAKHĀN

It was a great satisfaction for me to find myself once again on the Āb-i-Panja, the main branch Historical
of the Oxus. In 1906 I had been able to follow only the uppermost course of the river between interest of
Sarhad and its source at the glaciers of the Wakhjīr, and access to the main portion of Wakhān was Wakhān.
then barred to me on either side of the river. In Chapter III of Serindia I have already indicated
the special historical and geographical interest that Wakhān, remote as it is and poor in climate,
population, and resources, may claim as the most direct thoroughfare from the fertile regions
of ancient Bactria to the line of oases along the southern rim of the Tārim basin.¹ I have fully
discussed in the same chapter the comparatively abundant early notices of Wakhān which the
records of Chinese Annalists and travellers as well as of Marco Polo have preserved for us. In
modern times Wakhān has, since Captain John Wood's pioneer journey in 1838, been repeatedly
visited and described by qualified European observers, and the graphic account contained in the
classical narrative of that journey still holds good as regards the general character of the valley,
its people, and their conditions of life.² I may therefore restrict myself here mainly to a description
of the ruined sites that I was able to examine on my passage along the northern bank of the river,
and to a brief record of such local observations as have a direct bearing on the ethnic and historical
past of the territory.

A day's halt at Langar-kisht, made pleasant by the sight once more, after so long an interval, Homo
of trees, ripening crops, and green meadows, was employed in collecting anthropometrical materials. Alpinus
In the course of this work, continued elsewhere in Wakhān, I was struck again by the prevalence type among
of those characteristic features of the Homo Alpinus type which I had noticed among the Wakhīs Wakhīs.
examined on my second expedition, and which had caused Mr. Joyce to recognize in them the
nearest congeners of the Iranian Galchas or hill Tājiks.³ Starting on September 1st we approached,
at a distance of a mile and a half, the junction of the two branches of the Oxus coming from the
Great Pāmīr and Sarhad (Fig. 393), near the little hamlet of Hissār. Close to the east of it there
rises an isolated rocky ridge to a height of about 90 feet above the level of the fields, bearing on
its narrow top the massive walls of the ruined fort (Fig. 396) to which the hamlet owes its name.²ᵃ

As the sketch-plan, Pl. 45, shows, the approach to the fort leads up from the south-west, the Ruined fort
cliffs elsewhere being very precipitous and in some places unscalable, which accounts for the north- of Hissār.
western face of the hill-top being left without walls. The protected area is about 140 yards long,
with a maximum width of about 75 yards. At one point the approach passes through a large mass
of rock split through in the middle, and over this natural gate I noticed remains of a horizontal

5 S 2

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