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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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main valley to the Wakhijrui Pass, we branched off from it
about five miles lower down than the pass, and ascended a
side valley. In this we found a glacier, up which we had to
make our way, but it was easy enough to admit of our taking
yaks up it, and just before sunset we reached the summit.
Then, indeed, a magnificent view presented itself. By
Kukturuk the mountains had all been low and tame—I speak,
of course, comparatively, for they were far higher even above
the valley bottom than are any hills in the British Isles above
the sea—but here we were among the real mountain monarchs
once more. We saw before us an amphitheatre of snowy peaks
glittering in the fading sunlight, and at their foot one vast
snowfield, the depository of all their surplus snow and ice, and
the first beginning of the great glacier which would bear the
burden down the valley from it. This nook of mountains was
the very Heart of Central Asia. One side of the amphitheatre
was formed by the range of mountains which divides the waters
of the Oxus, which flow to Turkestan, from the waters of the
Indus, which make their way to India. Here was also the
meeting-point of the watershed which divides the rivers flowing
eastward into Chinese Turkestan from those flowing westward
to Russian and Afghan Turkestan, with that other watershed
which separates the rivers of India on the south from the rivers
of Central Asia on the north. At the very point at which
we stood those two great watersheds of Asia met ; they formed
the glittering amphitheatre of snowy peaks which we saw before
us, and it was from the snowfields at the base of these that
issued the parent glacier of the mighty Oxus.
Just below the pass we found a small lake, about three-
quarters of a mile in length and width, fed by three glaciers.
It was walled all round, except at one point, by cliffs a hundred
feet and more in height of pure transparent ice. Its waters
were of a deep clear blue, and overflowed at the one unguarded
side in a small stream down the glacier in the main valley below.
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