National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

was reached in which that great branch of the Khotan river has carved its way through the
northernmost main range of the K'un-lun. ¹² The extensive panoramic view obtained from
Tōpe station above the last of those spurs (13,949 ft. as determined by subsequent triangu-
lation) first showed serious and very puzzling discrepancies between the actual orography of
these mountains and the sketch-map of the route by which Mr. W. H. Johnson had made his
way from Leh down to Khotan. ¹³ It also made it quite certain that the head-waters of the
Yurung-kāsh were much further to the east than shown on that map, as Colonel H. Trotter
had already rightly conjectured in 1875. ¹⁵

At Karanghu-tāgh, the last inhabited place to the south and a colony of exiled
malefactors, reached after crossing the Yurung-kāsh, it proved impossible
Gorge of Yurung-
kāsh R. to obtain any guidance or other local help for the exploration of the
very difficult route by which Mr. Johnson had crossed the glacier-
covered main range from the south. We succeeded, however, in penetrating for two marches
along the extremely confined bed of the Yurung-kāsh until stopped by narrow impassable
gorges. ¹⁶ Thus it was ascertained that the upper course of the river lies in a succession of
very deep defiles passing to the south and west of Pk. 1/61A (E.61 or K.5 of the old
survey records), locally known as Muz-tāgh, 'the ice mountain'. This is the culminating
massif of the northernmost K'un-lun range and the only point on it previously fixed by the
G. T. Survey from the Ladak side.

Any attempt at progress towards the high waterparting in the south was barred by
local obstruction and the lateness of the season. Fortunately infor-
Route towards Kara-
kāsh R. mation was secured about another route leading across the mountains
to the north-west, and this enabled us to map the glacier-fed head-
waters of the streams draining the portion of the main K'un-lun range south and south-west
of Karanghu-tāgh. ¹⁷ A succession of troublesome passes, practicable only for yak transport,
led across the precipitous spurs dividing the valleys of Kāsh, Nissa and Chash and offered
excellent stations for plane-table and photo-theodolite work. They also revealed the extra-
ordinarily difficult nature of the ground to the south, rising with great glacier-clad heights
to an ice-covered crest-line nowhere much under 20,000 feet and filled elsewhere with a maze
of steep serrated ridges with deeply eroded gorges between them. ¹⁸ Further north on the
Yagan-dawān we reached the watershed between the Yurung-kāsh and Kara-kāsh rivers. For
the remarkable character of the region here entered, with its closely packed lines of bare
rocky spurs and its deep arid gorges shut in by unscalable rock slopes, a reference to my
photo-theodolite panoramas and Personal Narrative will suffice here. ¹⁹

The hope of connecting our surveys by triangulation with peaks fixed by the G. T.
Survey from the south on the main K'un-lun range was again and
Triangulation from
Ulūghat-dawān. again disappointed until we reached the Ulūghat-dawān (9,890 feet), ²⁰
the last pass above the Kara-kāsh river. Here a grand panorama
permitted us to recognize with certainty at least two previously fixed peaks in the south,
besides the ever conspicuous pyramid of 'Muz-tāgh' (Pk.1/61A) ²¹. With our 'hill station'
thus fixed in a position commanding extensive views in all directions, except in the north
where the ever-present dust haze hid the Khotan oasis and the desert plain, it became possible
to use the favourable atmospheric conditions fortunately prevailing on November 7th for
triangulating a considerable number of prominent points from the mountains above the Kara-