“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 Bam-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 1 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.  Hiuen Tsang, we see, gives a different account; Wood was there in the winter, but heard that in summer the lake swarmed with water-fowl. [Cf.  Captain Trotter, p. 263, in Forsyth’s Mission.]

The Pamir Steppe was crossed by Benedict Goes 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. 271-272; 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 Tashkurgan, and his road thence to Kashgar was, I apprehend, nearly the same as the Mirza’s in 1868-1869, 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.