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0098 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
中央アジア踏査記 : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / 98 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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A bitterly cold day spent in the Kirghiz camp of Bozai-
gumbaz made it possible for me to visit the Little Pamir
Lake. It lies at a height of 13,000 feet on one of those bleak
and wide upland valleys which form so characteristic a
feature of the 'Roof of the World'. What looked from this
flat expanse like a modest hill range, still snow-covered,
separated us from the Great Pamir Lake. Past this, I knew,
lay the route which Marco Polo had followed on his journey
through the wilderness of the 'Roof of the World' and which
he so graphically described. Hsüan-tsang, too, the great
Buddhist pilgrim, whom I have grown accustomed to claim
as my Chinese patron saint, had passed there when, centuries
before, he came back from his long pious wanderings in
India. Not until nine years later could I follow their track
there and that of Captain Wood, who in 1838 was the first
European since Marco Polo to visit the great lake.
It was along the uppermost course of the Ab-i-Panja, the
main feeder of the Oxus, and on an ancient route, that we
reached the foot of the Wakhjir pass. It is flanked by the
glaciers where Lord Curzon had rightly placed the true
source of the Oxus. A long day of toil saw us across the pass
and so across the Afghan-Chinese border. We started by
3 A.M. Our Afghan escort remained camped behind at the
foot of the pass to make sure that our Wakhi and Kirghiz
transport would not desert half-way. Enormous masses of
snow still covered the Wakhjir (Fig. 15). In spite of a mini-
mum temperature of 25° F. in the morning their surface
soon grew so soft that the powerful yaks of the Kirghiz had
to be relieved of loads and left behind. Only fear of our
Afghan protectors induced the Wakhis and Kirghiz to per-
severe in their efforts to carry our baggage across. Even so