Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/38

18 Mr. Schuyler, who saw some of these people in Khokand, describes them as "swarthy, thick-set, good-natured fellows."

From another source we learn that the mission sent to the Pamir consisted of Messrs. Severstof, Skassi, and Captain Schwartz, in addition to M. Muschketoff; and that its operations were carried on under consider- able difficulties through the inclemency of the weather. The cold was often very great, the thermometer going as low as 25° below zero centigrade, but the actual cold was felt still more keenly through the bitter winds that swept across the barren wastes of the Pamir. On the Pamir there are no forests and hardly any herbage ; and the expedition had to carry its own fuel with it. As the season was so advanced when the expedition left Tashkent in September, it is not at all fair to judge from the report of this expedition what the cli- mate and condition of the Pamir are during the spring. No inhabitants were found either on the Pamir or in the Alai valleys, and the Russians assumed that they had taken shelter in the warmer valleys of Ferghana. They traversed the Shart Pass, which is the next to the Terek, on their road from the Alai to Pamir, then taking the same route as Scobelef's force in 1876. The river Kok-su was here reached and to some extent explored; but we have yet to learn accurately what is the true course of the Pamir rivers, which have been several times christened and re-christened. The natives assert that this particular stream flows east- ward through Kashgar and into Lob-Nor, and is known as Tarimbal. If this be correct the Kok-su is merely