IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
r86 THE HEART OF A CONTINENT. [CHAP. VII.
in the world. The name Karakoram was apparently applied
to it because a pass to the eastward, where there is black gravel, or something like it, is so called. But there is also a pass
called Mustagh across the range. Mustagh means " ice-mountain," and surely that is a far more appropriate name for this stately range of icy peaks, which form the watershed of Asia.
To return to the narrative. We had now reached the waters of the Oprang River. This we followed down for a mile or
two to a patch of jungle called Shaksgam. The valley bottom
was here of loose pebbles, and from a quarter to half a mile broad. The river flowed over it in several branches, and was
generally fordable. On either bank the mountains rose very steeply out of the valley, and were quite barren, except for a small growth of the hardy wormwood. There were no trees, and shrubs or bushes were only to be found in small patches along the river-bed.
Next day we continued down the valley of the Oprang (Shaksgam) River, till we came to another, which my Baltis
called the Sarpo Laggo, flowing down from the main range and
joining it on the left bank. This we ascended till we reached a patch of jungle called Suget Jangal. Just before arriving
there I chanced to look up rather suddenly, and a sight met my eyes which fairly staggered me. We had just turned a corner which brought into view, on the left hand, a peak of appalling height, which could be none other than K.2, 28,278 feet in height, second only to Mount Everest. Viewed from this direction, it appeared to rise in an almost perfect cone,
but to an inconceivable height. We were quite close under it —perhaps not a dozen miles from its summit—and here on the
northern side, where it is literally clothed in glacier, there must have been from fourteen to sixteen thousand feet of solid ice. It was one of those sights which impress a man for ever, and produce a permanent effect upon the mind—a lasting sense of
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