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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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three men (Shukar Ali, Ramzan, and Abdula) carrying loads,
and I had prepared a light load for myself, but the men
would not hear of my doing so, and insisted upon carrying it.
I could not have had better or more willing men ; no amount
of hard work ever stopped them. We got down to the lake
all right, and there we were suddenly brought up. The lake
is fed from the melting of the glacier, but, as the sun had not
appeared for the last few days, the water had diminished several
feet, while the layer of ice remained at the top. This layer had
now fallen here and there, and though on the previous day
it was treacherous enough, now it was quite impracticable,
especially for men with loads. I ventured a few yards on to
the ice, but, seeing it falling through all round me with sharp
reports, I hurried back, and we had then to give up all hopes of
reaching the pass. With time and with a proper Alpine equip-
ment we might doubtless have found a way up the glacier and
perhaps over the depression in the range at its head, which we
had supposed to be a pass, but we had gone far enough to see
that this was not the real Shimshal Pass, for which we were
searching ; so, as we could not afford to spend any more time
on these ineffectual struggles with the glacier, we returned to
our late camping-ground, loaded up the ponies, and started off
back to Suget Jangal.
But though I had not found the pass I was seeking, I could
never regret spending those six days on the glacier in the heart
of the mountains. The glacier itself was marvellously beautiful,
and the mountains from which it flowed, and which towered
above it, formed the main range of the Himalayas. With the
sides of the valley hidden by the clouds, one could believe
one's self to be in the midst of the Arctic region. The centre
of the glacier was a mass of pinnacles of opaque white ice,
of every fantastic form and shape. Then among these were
beautiful caverns of ice with walls of transparent green, long
icicles hanging from the roof, and the entrance screened by
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