[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 eastern drainage, which finds an outlet in the Aktash Valley, and joining the Murghab, which obtains that from the Alichor and Siriz Pamirs.  As the eastern Taghdungbash stream finds its way into the Yarkand river, the watershed must be held as extending from that Pamir, down the range dividing it from the Little Pamir, and along the Neza Tash mountains to the Kizil Art Pass, leading to the Alai.” (Colonel Gordon, Forsyth’s Mission, p. 231.)