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Not the table-land of Pamir, in Thibet, the cradle of the Oxus and the Indus, but this lower Lapland terrace, is entitled to the designation of the "Roof of the World." We were on the summit, creeping along her mountain rafters, and looking southward, off her shelving eaves, to catch a glimpse of the light playing on her majestic front.
The continuation of the Hindu-Kush is found in the mountains of northern Persia, in the Caucasus and the chains of Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, the Alps and Pyrenees. The Pamir is like the body of a cuttlefish, which throws out arms in all directions.
Everywhere are great masses of trees, willows, mulberries, poplars. As far as the eye can reach are fields under culture, irrigated by numerous canals, also green fields in which are flocks of sheep; a country half Normandy, half Provence, were it not for the mountains of the Pamir on the horizon.
He pursued them wherever they went, across the Gobi Desert and beyond the Tian Shan range, taking up a strong position at modern Kuldja and Kashgar, sending his expeditions on to the Pamir, and preparing to complete his triumph by the invasion of the countries of the Oxus and Jaxartes.
These early engines were all very well as long as the line lay over an almost horizontal plain. But now we are among the gorges of the Pamir plateau, there are gradients of such steepness as to require more engine power. I watch the proceedings, and when the locomotive has been detached with its tender, the baggage van with Kinko in is at the head of the train.
"The Iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying between the Suliman mountains and the Pamir steppe on the one hand, and the great Mesopotamian valley on the other." It was a region of great extremes of temperature, the summers being hot, and the winters piercingly cold.
To cheer up my journey, I took from a good Frenchman, M. Peicheau, the wine cultivator of the Maharadja, a big dog, Pamir, who had already traversed the road with my friends, Bonvallot, Capus and Pepin, the well-known explorers.
I have done my best to get at the lie of the land, but till now the Pamir frontiers have always been a mystery to me." "They mystify most people, you will find. Only a person who has been there can understand the situation. And he who has been there does not know the frontier line either, for there is, in fact, no exact boundary.
"The conditions are, certainly, very complicated." "So complicated, indeed, that for many years past we have had differences with the English touching the frontier question. Our British friends have over and over again forced the Ameer of Afghanistan to send troops thither; an English expedition for the purpose of frontier delimitation has been frequently camped on the Pamir Mountains.
The Amou-Daria is the Oxus of the Ancients, the rival of the Indus and the Ganges. It used to be a tributary of the Caspian, as shown on the maps, but now it flows into the Sea of Aral. Fed by the snows and rains of the Pamir plateau, its sluggish waters flow between low clay cliffs and banks of sand.
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