er our eyes.

The Pamir, or Bam-i-Douniah, is commonly called the "Roof of the
World." From it radiate the mighty chains of the Thian Shan, of the
Kuen Lun, of the Kara Korum, of the Himalaya, of the Hindoo Koosh. This
orographic system, four hundred kilometres across, which remained for
so many years an impassable barrier, has been surmounted by Russian
tenacity. The Sclav race and the Yellow race have come into contact.

We may as well have a little book learning on the subject; but it is
not I that speak, but Major Noltitz.

The travelers of the Aryan people have all attempted to explore the
plateau of the Pamir. Without going back to Marco Polo in the
thirteenth century, what do we find? The English with Forsyth, Douglas,
Biddulph, Younghusband, and the celebrated Gordon who died on the Upper
Nile; the Russians with Fendchenko, Skobeleff, Prjevalsky,
Grombtchevsky, General Pevtzoff, Prince Galitzin, the brothers
Groum-Grjimailo; the French with Auvergne, Bonvalot, Capus, Papin,
Breteuil, Blanc, Ridgway, O'Connor, Dutreuil de Rhins, Joseph Martin,
Grenard, Edouard Blanc; the Swedes with Doctor Swen-Hedin.

This Roof of the World, one would say that some devil on two sticks had
lifted it up in his magic hand to let us see its mysteries. We know now
that it consists of an inextricable entanglement of valleys, the mean
altitude of which exceeds three thousand metres; we know that it is
dominated by the peaks of Gouroumdi and Kauffmann, twenty-two thousand
feet high, and the peak of Tagarma, which is twenty-seven thousand
feet; we know that it sends off to the west the Oxus and the Amou
Daria, and to the east the Tarim; we know that it chiefly consists of
primary rocks, in which are patches of schist and quartz, red sands of
secondary age, and the clayey, sandy loess of the quaternary period
which is so abundant in Central Asia.

The difficulties the Grand Transasiatic had in crossing this plateau
were extraordinary. It was a challenge from the genius of man to
nature, and the victory remained with genius. Through the gently
sloping passes which the Kirghizes call "bels," viaducts, bridges,
embankments, cuttings, tunnels had to be made to carry the line. Here
are sharp curves, gradients which require the most powerful
locomotives, here and there stationary engines to haul up the train
with cables, in a word, a herculean labor, superior to the works of the
American engineers in the defiles of the Sierra Nevada and th