The Wind Was
Strong And Keen, And With The Mercury Down At 15 Degrees Fahrenheit
It Was Impossible To Do Anything But To Go To Bed In The Early
Afternoon, And Stay There Till The Next Day.
Mr. Redslob took a
severe chill, which produced an alarming attack of pleurisy, from the
effects of which he never fully recovered.
We started on a grim snowy morning, with six yaks carrying our
baggage or ridden by ourselves, four led horses, and a number of
Tibetans, several more having been sent on in advance to cut steps in
the glacier and roughen them with gravel. Within certain limits the
ground grows greener as one ascends, and we passed upwards among
primulas, asters, a large blue myosotis, gentians, potentillas, and
great sheets of edelweiss. At the glacier foot we skirted a deep
green lake on snow with a glorious view of the Kharzong glacier and
the pass, a nearly perpendicular wall of rock, bearing up a steep
glacier and a snowfield of great width and depth, above which tower
pinnacles of naked rock. It presented to all appearance an
impassable barrier rising 2,500 feet above the lake, grand and awful
in the dazzling whiteness of the new-fallen snow. Thanks to the ice
steps our yaks took us over in four hours without a false step, and
from the summit, a sharp ridge 17,500 feet in altitude, we looked our
last on grimness, blackness, and snow, and southward for many a weary
mile to the Indus valley lying in sunshine and summer.
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