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
1889.] WANT OF MAPS. 255
at them to keep them straight. In spite of it all, we would see the ponies, with our clothes or bedding, fall into a pool
with the water nearly over their backs. Most of the men got on the top of the packs, but some waded through the water, and they had a rough time of it.
We passed the Shimshal River, up which lies the route to
Hunza we were seeking for, but we were rather short of grain
for the ponies, on account of their having had more than their
usual share on the glaciers, where they could get no grass, and, as I calculated from observations for latitude that we could not be far from Chong Jangal, where I hoped to find Turdi Kol
with a fresh relay of supplies, I thought it best to go there
first.
Chong Jangal was the point on the Yarkand River where
it was believed the Oprang River joined it. As I have already
said, we could not carry all the necessary supplies with us,
but had to carry them in two instalments. We had reached
the end of our first instalment, and had to look out for the second. There was no map of this region, and I could find
no man with any full or accurate knowledge of it, or any in-
formation at all about what lay between the Shimshal Pass and the Yarkand River. All I could do was to tell Turdi Kol to
go along the Yarkand River with the second instalment to
this place, Chong Jangal, where he said a large river joined in from the south. This he thought must be the Oprang River,
whose upper waters I should be exploring. The supplies would
therefore be at Chong Jangal ; but whether the river which joined in there really was the Oprang River, and whether, even
if it was, my party would be able to get along it, nobody knew.
The river might have flowed far away from Chong Jangal. It might never join the Yarkand River at all, or it might flow
through gorges along which it would be impossible to take our ponies. Of all this we had to take our chance. But Turdi Kol
had been down the Yarkand River before, and before leaving it
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