By the Chichiklik Pass.
According to the record quoted above, he appears to have spent no less
than twenty-eight days in the journeys from the hamlets of 'Sarcil'
(Sarikol, i.e. Tash-kurghan) to 'Hiarchan' (Yarkand) - a distance of some
188 miles, now reckoned at ten days' march." (Stein, Ancient Khotan, pp.
40-42.)
XXXII., p. 171. "The Plain is called PAMIER, and you ride across it for
twelve days together, finding nothing but a desert without habitations or
any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with them
whatever they have need of."
At Sarhad, Afghan Wakhan, Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, I., p. 69,
writes: "There was little about the low grey houses, or rather hovels, of
mud and rubble to indicate the importance which from early times must have
attached to Sarhad as the highest place of permanent occupation on the
direct route leading from the Oxus to the Tarim Basin. Here was the last
point where caravans coming from the Bactrian side with the products of
the Far West and of India could provision themselves for crossing that
high tract of wilderness 'called Pamier' of which old Marco Polo rightly
tells us: 'You ride across it ...' And as I looked south towards the
snow-covered saddle of the Baroghil, the route I had followed myself, it
was equally easy to realize why Kao Hsien-chih's strategy had, after the
successful crossing of the Pamirs, made the three columns of his Chinese
Army concentrate upon the stronghold of Lien-yuen, opposite the present
Sarhad.
