still retains), and to the existence of the lake (or lakes) upon its surface. The Chinese pilgrims Hwui Seng and Sung Yun, who passed this way, A.D. 518, inform us that these high lands of the Tsung Ling were commonly said to be midway between heaven and earth. The more celebrated Hwen Thsang, who came this way nearly 120 years later (about 644) on his return to China, "after crossing the mountains for 700 li, arrived at the valley of Pomilo (Pamir). This valley is 1000 li (about 200 miles) from east to west, and 100 li (20 miles) from north to south, and lies between two snowy ranges in the centre of the Tsung Ling mountains. The traveller is annoyed by sudden gusts of wind, and the snow-drifts never cease, spring or summer. As the soil is almost constantly frozen, you see but a few miserable plants, and no crops can live. The whole tract is but a dreary waste, without a trace of human kind. In the middle of the valley is a great lake 300 li (60 miles) from east to west, and 500 li from north to south. This stands in the centre of Jambudwipa (the Buddhist oikovμén) on a plateau of prodigious elevation. An endless variety of creatures peoples its waters. When you hear the murmur and clash of its waves you think you are listening to the noisy hum of a great market in which vast crowds of people are mingling in excitement. . . . The lake discharges to the west, and a river runs out of it in that direction and joins the Potsu (Oxus). . . . . The lake likewise discharges to the east, and a great river runs out, which flows eastward to the western frontier of Kiesha (Káshgar) where it joins the river Sita, and runs eastward with it into the sea." The story of an eastern outflow from the lake is no doubt legend, connected with an ancient Hindu belief (see Cathay, p. 347), but Burnes in modern times heard much the same story. And the Mirza, in 1868, took up the same impression regarding the smaller lake called Pamir Kul, in which the southern branch of the Panja originates.

"After quitting the (frozen) surface of the river," says Wood, "we ascended a low hill which apparently bounded the valley to the eastward. On surmounting this, at 3 P.M. of the 19th February 1838, we stood, to use a native expression, upon the Bám-i-Duniah or 'Roof of the World,' while before us lay stretched a noble, but frozen sheet of water, from whose western end issued the infant river of the Oxus. This fine lake (Sirikol) lies in the form of a crescent, about 14 miles long from east to west, by an average breadth of one mile. On three sides it is bordered by swelling hills about 500 feet high, while along its southern bank they rise into mountains 3500 feet above the lake, or 19,000 feet above the sea, and covered with perpetual snow, from which never-failing source the lake is supplied. . . . . Its elevation, measured by the temperature of boiling water, is 15,600 feet."

....

The absence of birds on Pamir, reported by Marco, probably shows that he passed very late or early in the season. Hwen Thsang, we see, gives a different account; Wood was there in winter, but heard that in summer the lake swarmed with water-fowl.

The Pamir Steppe was crossed by Benedict Goës late in the autumn of 1603, and the narrative speaks of the great cold and desolation, and the difficulty of breathing. We have also an abstract of the journey of Abdul Mejid, a British agent, who passed Pamir on his way to Kokan in 1861 :-" Fourteen weary days were occupied in crossing the steppe; the marches were long, depending on uncertain supplies of grass and water, which sometimes wholly failed them; food for man and beast had to be carried with the party, for not a trace of human habitation is to be met with in those inhospitable wilds. . . . . The steppe is interspersed with tamarisk jungle and the wild willow, and in the summer with tracts of high grass." (Neumann, Pilgerfahrten Buddh. Priester, p. 50; V. et V. de H. T. 271-2; 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 Tashkurghan, and his road thence to Kashgar was, I apprehend, nearly the same as the Mirza's in 1868-9, 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.

We may observe that Severtsof asserts Pamir to be a generic term, applied to all high plateaux in the Thian Shan.

Horns of Ovis Poli.

Wood speaks of the numerous wolves in this region. And the great sheep is that to which Blyth, in honour of our traveller, has given the name of Ovis Poli.† A pair of horns, sent by Wood to the Royal Asiatic Society, and of which a representation is given above, affords the following dimensions:-Length of one horn on the curve, 4 feet 8 inches; round the base 14 inches; distance of tips apart 3 feet 9 inches. This sheep appears to be the same as the Rass, of which Burnes heard that the horns were so big that a man could not lift a pair, and that foxes bred in them; also that the carcase formed a load for two horses.

According to Colonel Tod, the Hindu bard Chand speaks of "Pamer, chief of mountains" (I. p. 24). But one may like and respect Colonel Tod without feeling able to rely on such quotations of his unconfirmed.

Usually written Pol, which is nonsense.

Wood says that these horns supply shoes for the Kirghiz horses, and also a good substitute for stirrup-irons. "We saw numbers of horns strewed about in every direction, the spoils of the Kirghiz hunter. Some of these were of an astonishingly large size, and belonged to an animal of a species between a goat and a sheep, inhabiting the steppes of Pamir. The ends of the horns projecting above the snow often indicated the direction of the road; and wherever they were heaped in large quantities and disposed in a semicircle, there our escort recognised the site of a Kirghiz summer encampment. . . . . We came in sight of a roughlooking building, decked out with the horns of the wild sheep, and all but buried amongst the snow. It was a Kirghiz burying-ground." (pp. 223, 229, 231.)

Ovis Poli, the Great Sheep of Pamir. (After Severtsof.)

"El hi a grant moutitude de mouton sauvages qe sunt grandisme, car ont lee cornes bien six paumes"

In 1867 this great sheep was shot by M. Severtsof on the Plateau of Aksai in the western Tianshan. He reports these animals to go in great herds, and to be very difficult to kill. However he brought back two specimens. The Narin River is stated to be the northern limit of the species. Severtsof also states that the enemies of the Ovis Poli are the wolves.

As to the pasture, Timkowski heard that "the pasturage of Pamir is so luxuriant and nutritious, that if horses are left on it for more than forty days they die of repletion" (I. 421). And Wood: "The grass of Pamir, they tell you, is so rich that a sorry horse is here brought into good condition in less than twenty days; and its nourishing qualities are evidenced in the productiveness of their ewes, which almost invariably bring forth two lambs at a birth" (p. 365).

With regard to the effect upon fire ascribed to the "great cold," Ramusio's version inserts the expression "gli fu affermato per miracolo," "it was asserted to him as a wonderful circumstance." And Humboldt thinks it so strange that Marco should not have observed this personally that he doubts whether Polo himself passed the Pamir. "How is it that he does not say that he himself had seen how the flames disperse and leap about, as I myself have so often experienced at similar altitudes in the Cordilleras of the Andes, especially when investigating the boiling-point of water?" (Cent. Asia, Germ. Transl. I. 588.) But the words. quoted from Ramusio do not exist in the old texts, and they are probably an editorial interpolation indicating disbelief in the statement.

MM. Huc and Gabet made a like observation on the high passes of north-eastern Tibet: "The argols gave out much smoke, but would not burn with any flame;" only they adopted the native idea that this as well as their own sufferings in respiration was caused by some pernicious exhalation.

66

Major Montgomerie, R.E., of the Indian Survey, who has probably passed more time nearer the heavens than any man living, sends me the following note on this passage: What Marco Polo says as to fire at great altitudes not cooking so effectually as usual is perfectly correct as far as anything boiled is concerned, but I doubt if it is as to anything roasted. The want of brightness in a fire at great altitudes is I think altogether attributable to the poorness of the fuel, which consists of either small sticks or bits of roots, or of argols of dung, all of which give out a good deal of smoke, more especially the latter if not quite dry; but I have often seen a capital blaze made with the argols when perfectly dry. As to cooking, we found that rice, dál, and potatoes would never soften properly, no matter how long they were boiled. This of course was due to the boiling-point being only from 170° to 180°. Our tea, moreover, suffered from the same cause, and was never good when we were over 15,000 feet. This was very marked. Some of my natives made dreadful complaints about the rice and dál that they got from the village-heads in the valleys, and vowed that they only gave them what was very old and hard, as they could not soften it!"

NOTE 3.-Bolor is a subject which it would take several pages to discuss with fulness, and I must refer for such fuller discussion to a paper in the J. R. G. S. vol. XLII. p. 473.

The name Bolor is very old, occurring in Hwen Thsang's Travels (7th century), and in still older Chinese works of like character. General Cunningham has told us that Balti is still termed Balor by the Dards of Gilgit; and Mr. Shaw, that Palor is an old name still sometimes used by the Kirghiz for the Upper part of Chitral. The indications of Hwen Thsang are in accordance with General Cunningham's information; and the fact that Chitral is described under the name of Bolor in Chinese works of the last century, entirely justifies that of Mr. Shaw. A Pushtu poem of the seventeenth century, translated by

Major Raverty, assigns the mountains of Bilaur-istán, as the northern boundary of Swát. The collation of these indications shows that the term Bolor must have been applied somewhat extensively to the high regions adjoining the southern margin of Pamir. And a passage in the Tárikh Rashidi, written at Kashgar in the 16th century by a cousin of the great Baber, affords us a definition of the tract to which, in its larger sense, the name was thus applied: "Malaur (i.e. Balaur or Bolor). . . . is a country with few level spots. It has a circuit of four months' march. The eastern frontier borders on Kashgar and Yarkand; it has Badakhshan to the north, Kabul to the west, and Kashmir to the south." The writer was thoroughly acquainted with his subject, and the region which he so defines must have embraced Sirikol and all the wild country south of Yarkand, Balti, Gilghit, Yasin, Chitral, and perhaps Kafiristán. This enables us to understand Polo's use of the

term.

This geo

The name of Bolor in later days has been in a manner a symbol.of controversy. It is prominent in the apocryphal travels of George Ludwig von preserved in the Military Archives at St. Petersburg. That work represents a town of Bolor as existing to the north of Badakhshan, with Wakhán still further to the north. graphy we now know to be entirely erroneous, but it is in full accordance with the maps and tables of the Jesuit missionaries and their pupils, who accompanied the Chinese troops to Kashgar in 1758-9. The paper in the Geographical Society's Journal,' which has been referred to, demonstrates how these erroneous data must have originated. shows that the Jesuit geography was founded on downright accidental error, and, as a consequence, that the narratives which profess de visu to corroborate that geography must be downright forgeries. When the first edition was printed, I retained the belief in a Bolor where the Jesuits placed it.

It

The J. A. S. Bengal, for 1853 (Vol. XXII.) contains extracts from the diary of a Mr. Gardner in those central regions of Asia. These read more like the memoranda of a dyspeptic dream than anything else, and the only passage I can find illustrative of our traveller is the following; the region is described as lying twenty days south-west of Kashgar: "The Keiaz tribe live in caves on the highest peaks, subsist by hunting, keep no flocks, said to be anthropophagous, but have handsome women; eat their flesh raw" (p. 295; Pelerins Boud. III. 316, 421, &c.; Ladak, 34, 45, 47; Mag. Asiatique, I. 92, 96-7 ; Not. et Ext. II. 475, XIV. 492 ; J. A. S. B. XXXI. 279; Mr. R. Shaw in Geog Proceedings, XVI. 246, 400; Notes regarding Bolor, &c., J. R. G. S. XLII. 473).

As this sheet goes finally to press we hear of the exploration of Pamir by officers of Mr. Forsyth's Mission.