The Pamirs Volume 1; Being a Narrative of a Year's Expedition on Horseback and on Foot Through Kashmir, Western Tibet, Chinese Tartary, and Russian Central Asia (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 Excerpt: ...colder as we ascended. We saw some very curious birds, the like of which neither Roche nor I had ever seen before, both small and large. They were as tame as possible, especially a species of pigeon, larger than a blue rock, with a beautiful fawn-coloured breast and almost a fan tail of dark blue and white. Four of them flew in front of my pony, and kept stopping every now and again, sometimes on the ground, at other times sitting on a rock and taking stock of me and my pony "Panamik." We were now at an altitude of 17,000 feet, and all among frozen rivers, frozen lakes and glaciers, the whole way for miles, therefore 1 was much astonished at finding flowers growing all amongst ice, snow and gravel. I passed four species; one was a small purple foxglove, another was so like a violet that I mistook it for one, a third was a blue daisy, and the fourth a sort of yellow cowslip. 1 dismounted and gathered one of each as a specimen, but was so disgusted with the exceedingly nasty smell that each of them had, that I took no further interest in them. Animal life there was none, save only the birds already referred to, and an occasional raven, eagle, or chough. After riding past two frozen lakes we came to a dead stop. An avalanche had lately come down, and blocked our way, just before coming to a third lake, which being deeper than the others, was only partially frozen. On our right were precipitous rocks, on our left the lake, and in front of us this great mass of snow. We debated for a long time what we should do, and at last we left the ponies in charge of one man, while we went cautiously over the snow, to see how much it would bear. Luckily it was well frozen, and as it bore us and there was no other road for us to take, we led the ponies over it in s...