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My advice is that you should send your family to Mangu, and by this step you will justify yourself and remove any suspicions there may be." Kublai adopted this wise course, and proceeded in person to Karakoram, where he succeeded in proving his innocence and in discomfiting his enemies.
Once more the Sungs obtained a brief respite. The death of Mangu threatened fresh disputes and strife among the Mongol royal family. Kublai was his brother's lawful heir, but Arikbuka, the youngest of the brothers was in possession of Karakoram, and supreme throughout Mongolia. He was hostile to Kublai, and disposed to assert all his rights and to make the most of his opportunities.
Continuing our exploration of the upper benches of the amphitheatre, we turn to the right and skirt the upper Indus, which runs for several hundred miles from south-east to north-west close along the southern foot of the Karakoram, or rather upon a "hip" of the Roof of the World.
The British in attaching this corner to Kashmir rather strained established boundaries in their own favor, and will doubtless continue the process till all Yaghistán is absorbed and the great Karakoram range becomes the frontier from the Afghan territory to that of Chinese Tibet. At the town of Gilgit we have a reproduction in little of the valley of Srinagar.
As we ascend right up the glacier either the one coming down from the Mustagh Pass or the one to the east running parallel with the general line of the Karakoram Range we feel not only far away from but also high above the rest of the world. And we seem to have risen to an altogether purer region.
But the hope of the Sungs that the fortune of war would declare in their favor was soon destroyed by the vast preparations of the Mongols, who, at a special kuriltai, held at Karakoram, declared that the conquest of China was to be completed.
There are roaring torrents and wide, placid rivers. The Sikkim Himalaya, looking down on the plains of India on the one side and the steppes of Tibet on the other, is the most suitable place I know for a study of Natural Beauty. But there are beauties in Kashmir and in the great Karakoram Mountains behind Kashmir which are not found in Sikkim.
These designs so far succeeded, that in 1257 Mangu finally deprived Kublai of all his commands, and ordered him to proceed to Karakoram. At this harsh and unmerited treatment Kublai showed himself inclined to rebel and dispute his brother's authority.
By this time the Mongol chiefs of the family of Genghis in Western Asia were practically independent of the nominal Great Khan, and governed their states in complete sovereignty, and waged war without reference to Karakoram.
Arikbuka was undoubtedly popular among the Mongols, while Kublai, who was regarded as half a Chinese on account of his education, had a far greater reputation south of the wall than north of it. Kublai could not tolerate the open defiance of his authority, and the contempt shown for what was his birthright, by Arikbuka; and in 1261 he advanced upon Karakoram at the head of a large army.
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