Priester, P. 50; V. Et V. De H.
T. 271-272; Wood, 232; Proc.
R. G. S. X. 150.)
There is nothing absolutely to decide whether Marco's route from Wakhan
lay by Wood's Lake "Sirikol," or Victoria, or by the more southerly source
of the Oxus in Pamir Kul. These routes would unite in the valley of
Tashkurgan, and his road thence to Kashgar was, I apprehend, nearly the
same as the Mirza's in 1868-1869, by the lofty Chichiklik Pass and Kin
Valley. But I cannot account for the forty days of wilderness. The Mirza
was but thirty-four days from Faizabad to Kashgar, and Faiz Bakhsh only
twenty-five.
[Severtsof (Bul. Soc. Geog. XI. 1890, p. 587), who accepts Trotter's
route, by the Pamir Khurd (Little Pamir), says there are three routes from
Wakhan to Little Pamir, going up the Sarhadd: one during the winter, by
the frozen river; the two others available during the spring and the
summer, up and down the snowy chain along the right bank of the Sarhadd,
until the valley widens out into a plain, where a swelling is hardly to be
seen, so flat is it; this chain is the dividing ridge between the Sarhadd
and the Aksu. From the summit, the traveller, looking towards the west,
sees at his feet the mountains he has crossed; to the east, the Pamir
Kul and the Aksu, the river flowing from it. The pasture grounds around
the Pamir Kul and the sources of the Sarhadd are magnificent; but lower
down, the Aksu valley is arid, dotted only with pasture grounds of
little extent, and few and far between.
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