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| 0417 |
The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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his Gurkhas showed their mountain craft. I was then able
to realize how valuable is a training in mountaineering, and how
useful are the Alpine appliances. Bruce took me up places
which I should, of course, have attempted if I had been obliged,
but which I should certainly not have cared to ascend in cold
blood like this without the aid of rope and ice-axe. We finally
reached a very narrow rock arête or ridge, and, climbing thence
to its summit, found ourselves sitting astride of a razor-like
ridge of limestone, with our legs on each side dangling over
nearly sheer precipices. Just at the summit the rock was so
sharp that it was impossible to stand up, and I doubt if we
could even have sat except astride. We were at no great
height, for the summit, according to our aneroid, was only
thirteen thousand five hundred feet above sea-level; but this
was the highest point in the immediate vicinity, and we were
able to get a magnificent bird's-eye view of the Chitral valley
and a good part of the country.
It is from a height like this that one can best appreciate
what Chitral really is. It is just a sea of mountains. The
peaks stand all round like the crests of a wave, sometimes of
the same dull colour as the general mass, sometimes breaking
upwards in crests of white snow. Ridge behind ridge the
mountains rise, like the waves of the sea, and they finally toss
themselves up into one great towering mass, and we saw
straight before us, and only a few miles distant, the Tirich Mir,
twenty-five thousand four hundred feet in height. For the
most part these mountains are absolutely bare, and the whole
country appears to be nothing but rock, till far down in the
valley bottoms, at places where the water from some mountain
torrent can be led on to cultivable ground, patches of green
are seen. Even of the valley bottoms the whole lengths are
not cultivated, and it is only where suitable soil has been
washed down from the mountains and deposited in the valley,
and when water can be brought on to this that any cultivation
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