nt 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. It is to this part of Pamir that
Marco Polo's description applies; more than any other part of this
_ensemble_ of high valleys, this line of water parting, of the Sarhadd and
the Aksu, has the aspect of a _Roof of the World_ (_Bam-i-dunya_, Persian
name of Pamir).--H. C.].

[We can trace Marco Polo's route from Wakhan, on comparing it with Captain
Younghusband's Itinerary from Kashgar, which he left on the 22nd July,
1891, for Little Pamir: Little Pamir at Bozai-Gumbaz, joins with the
Pamir-i-Wakhan at the Wakhijrui Pass, first explored by Colonel Lockhart's
mission. Hence the route lies by the old fort of Kurgan-i-Ujadbai at the
junction of the two branches of the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir (Supreme Head of
the Mountains), the Tagh-dum-bash Pamir, Tash Kurgan, Bulun Kul, the Gez
Defile and Kashgar. (_Proc. R. G. S._ XIV. 1892, pp. 205-234.)--H. C.]

We may observe that Severtsof asserts _Pamir_ to be a generic term,
applied to all high plateaux in the Thian Shan.[3]

["The Pamir plateau may be described as a great, broad, rounded ridge,
extending north and south, and crossed by thick mountain chains, between
which lie elevated valleys, open and gently sloping towards the east, but
narrow and confined, with a rapid fall towards the west. The waters which
run in all, with the exception of the eastern flow from the Taghdungbash,
collect in the Oxus; the Aksu from the Little Pamir lake receiving the
easter