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

Survey towards Kāsh-
gar R. headwaters.

for the mountains westwards. But the summer floods in the K'un-lun
valleys would not allow the valuable convoy of antiques to be started at
once towards the Kara-koram and Leh. I was therefore able to let
Lāl Singh to whose care I had to entrust it, set out meanwhile with me for a survey of the
high snowy mountain chain which continues the Muz-tāgh-atā range to the headwaters of the
Kāshgar river south-east of the Alai. We separated at Opal whence Lāl Singh made his
way round the northern end of that chain to the great Pāmir-like valley of Moji bordering
the watershed towards the Great Kara-kul and Rang-kul Lakes on the Russian Pāmirs. ⁸⁹
By descending this valley to below Kun-tigmaz he connected his survey with the work effected
in 1900 from the Muz-tāgh-atā side and thus practically completed our mapping along the
Chinese portion of the Pāmirs. Crossing thence the high Ūlūgh-art pass, flanked by a mag-
nificent glacier, he rejoined me for final instructions at the mountain camp of Bostān-arche ⁹⁰
where much urgent writing work had detained me before my start from Chinese soil.

Return of surveyors
to Ladāk.

The short journey which carried me thence to the Russian Pāmir frontier below the
Kizil-art pass, lay mostly along Lāl Singh's recent route and offered no
opportunity for fresh topographical work. Lāl Singh himself after
taking charge of the big convoy of antiques at Kāshgar, was obliged to
proceed with it to Yārkand and thence to follow the usual caravan route which leads to Ladāk
via Kök-yār. Beyond the latter place the ground had remained outside the area of our pre-
vious surveys. Plane-table work was therefore resumed here by Lāl Singh and carried across
the Tiznaf river headwaters and the Yangi-dawān to the uppermost Yārkand river and finally
to the Indian frontier on the Kara-koram pass. ⁹¹

His constant personal supervision was needed to assure safe transit for the many loads
of precious and often very fragile antiques on these marches, with their frequent river crossings
and other risks, and the complete success with which this difficult task was carried through
sufficiently explains why the survey work was here necessarily limited to what could be
accomplished while keeping to the route line.

Extent of survey
operations.

The survey operations of my third expedition thus completed had extended, as far as
work in Chinese territory was concerned, over a period of exactly two
years. Though their duration was thus about four months shorter than
the corresponding period of my second journey yet the area covered by
our surveys of 1913-15 was if anything even more extensive than before. This result was
very largely due to the indefatigable energy displayed by R.B. Lāl Singh.

Recognition of sur-
veyors' services.

It was hence a special satisfaction to me to see his services to geography on this
expedition duly recognized by the award of the Cuthbert Peek Grant
of the Royal Geographical Society in 1916, and those he had rendered
to the Survey of India during 37 years of work in fields as widely
apart as Arabia, Persia, the Indian N.W. Frontier, Tibet and China, by the grant of a
valuable Jāgir which the Government of India bestowed upon him on his retirement in 1919.
The equally zealous help I had received from Afrāz-gul Khān and the special aptitude for
topographical work which he had proved on this journey, led to his appointment in 1918 as
Sub-Assistant Superintendent in the Survey of India and received due acknowledgment also
by the bestowal in 1917 of the Maegregor Silver Medal for Military Surveyors.