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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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hardships they had to suffer on the raids, and the little benefit
they got from them. Everything they took, they said, had to
be handed over to the chief, and all the raids were organized
by him. If they were suspected of not having given up all
they had, or if the chief wanted to squeeze more taxes out
of them, they were stripped naked and kept for hours in a
freezing glacier stream. They were in abject terror of their
chief, and during their conversation they were constantly dis-
cussing the probabilities of their heads being cut off. If they
did this or that they would lose their heads, and they would
illustrate the action by drawing the edge of their hands across
their necks. They wore always a grave, hard look, as of men
who lived in a constant struggle for existence, and were too
much engrossed by it to think of any of the levities of life. I
afterwards found that down in the lower valleys of Hunza the
people are fond of polo and dancing, but these I first met were
men from the upper valleys, where the struggle is harder, and
where they were frequently turned out for raiding expeditions.
On the following day, October 15, we at last crossed the
Shimshal Pass, for which I had been seeking during so many
weeks. The ascent was steep for a mile and a half, but not
really difficult, and afterwards the road gradually ascends to
the pass, which is a pamir, as the Kanjutis called it, that is,
a nearly level plain or very shallow and wide trough between
high mountains on either side. A mile from the summit we
passed a collection of shepherds' huts, used in the summer ; at
the summit, which was fourteen thousand seven hundred feet
above sea-level, there were two small lakes. There was no
snow at all on the pass, which was a most unexpectedly easy
one. We had been anticipating struggles with glaciers and
climbs up rocky precipices, but here was a pass which we could
have ridden ponies over if we had wanted to do so.
This Shimshal Pass forms one of those remarkable depres-
sions which are here and there met with in these mountains. Up
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