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Updated: May 27, 2025
The country through which the Grand Transasiatic is now running is not so monotonous. The plain begins to undulate, for we are approaching the outer ramifications of the eastern orographic system. We are nearing the tableland of the Pamirs. At the same time we continue at normal speed along this section of a hundred and fifty kilometres which separates us from Khodjend.
It was raining and dreary looking and then I saw as we passed them a line of posts painted in black and white stripes a half mile apart on each side of the train and I knew we had crossed the boundary and that the line of posts stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and from the Pacific to the Caucasus Mountains and the Pamirs.
In the caravanserais of Bokhara and Samarkand he is known, and there are shikaris in the Pamirs who still speak of him round their fires. If you were going to visit Petrograd or Rome or Cairo it would be no use asking him for introductions; if he gave them, they would lead you into strange haunts.
But nothing came of this project. Since then ideas have changed. We have seen that only a gradual advance can lead us to our objective. And we have not lost time. In the west we have approached Herat, until now we are only about sixty miles away, and in the east, in the Pamirs, we have pushed much nearer still to India." "It is most interesting to hear all this.
Every day the sun fought a losing battle against the frost and bitter winds of the Pamirs, that pierce even through sheep-skin coats to the marrow of the bones; and every night the thermometer fell to zero, or below it. For winter begins betimes on the "Roof of the World."
An English envoy arrived in Cabul, and negotiations were entered into, which we contrived to spin out sufficiently to gain time for the erection of small forts in the Pamirs. Finally an arrangement was arrived at in London to the effect that the Pench should be the boundary between Russia and Afghanistan in the Pamir territory.
He glanced up at his companion, and the two men saw the same anxiety in each other's eyes. "Anything more of Marka?" asked Wratislaw. "Nothing definite. He is somewhere in the Pamirs, up to some devilry or other. Oh, by the by, there is something I have forgotten. I found out the other day that our gentleman had been down quite recently in south-west Kashmir.
Cosmo calculated from his estimate of the probable rate of rise of the flood and from the direction and force of the currents that all but the very highest of the Pamirs must already be submerged. It was probable, he thought, that the water had attained a level of between seventeen and eighteen thousand feet. This, as subsequent events indicated, was undoubtedly an underestimate.
For that gentleman had not succeeded in the designs which were occupying his mind when he had first made Kitty's acquaintance in the Grosvilles' country-house. He had desired an appointment in Egypt; but it had not been given him, and after some angry restlessness at home, he had once more taken up a pilgrim's staff and departed on fresh travels, bound this time for the Pamirs and Thibet.
"Perhaps one day on the other side of the Hindu Kush, the Russians may covet it and then the Road will go on to meet them." "Something will happen," said Shere Ali. "At all events something will happen." The shadows of the evening found them still debating what complication might force the hand of those in authority. But always they came back to the Russians and a movement of troops in the Pamirs.
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