Читать книгу Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventurers in Tibet - Sven Hedin - Страница 11

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We had a hard day on September 1. The ground was white, and the sky had a threatening aspect, but a small blue strip to the south gave hopes of fine weather. We started early, and as I jumped into the saddle I saw the whole narrow valley filled with the various sections of the caravan. When I consigned my tent to its fate, that is, Tsering and the Hindus, our deserted camp-fires were still smoking, and the new cairn stood out black against the snow. We left camp No. 1 with some excitement, for now we were approaching wild lands in real earnest, and were to cross a pass of the first rank, which none of my people was acquainted with, and of which we knew only that it was called Chang-lung-yogma; it lies a little east of the pass marked on the large English map of north-east Ladak, and, as far as I know, no European has yet made use of it.

The terraces along the river bank gradually come to an end, and, where they do occur, they are only a couple of yards high, and disturbed by frequent landslips. Our route runs to the north-east. In front of us appears a pure white saddle, now flooded with sunshine; we take it for the pass; but no, the mules, as shown by their tracks in the snow, have turned in another direction.

The flanks on both sides consist of loose, extremely fine material, wet and crossed by clefts a foot deep. At the edge of some spurs these clefts run like the curved fissures of a glacier tongue. The ground is unstable; the slopes slip down and are displaced by their own weight, for they are soaked through, and there are no roots to hold the fine material; they are in a state of motion, and the gently rounded forms prevailing in the landscape are the result of this phenomenon.

The silence of the desert reigns in this country where the feet of man have never wandered; only now and then are heard the warning shouts of the caravan men. Not one of the animals is left behind, all goes on satisfactorily. May all this hard day’s march pass fortunately! The valley becomes quite narrow, the water trickles out of the gravelly soil in quantities barely sufficient to form a brook. But even on this gravel the animals sink in the mud.

At the foot of a trough leading up to a side-pass, which had led us astray, the caravan came to a halt, and an accessible passage was searched for.

I rode forwards up innumerable zigzags, and stopped at every corner to take breath. Muhamed Isa reported that the true pass had been found, but I rode with Robert up to a height rising above all the land around, to reconnoitre.

The view from this point was far too striking to be sought merely for the purpose of orientation. Above and behind the mountains in the foreground, some of them coal-black, appeared a white horizon and a jagged line of mighty Himalayan peaks. A really magnificent landscape! The sky was almost clear; only here and there floated a few white clouds. Down below us lay the small valley through which we had struggled so laboriously; here it looked ridiculously small, an insignificant drain in a world of gigantic mountains. Some detachments of the caravan were still toiling up the narrow way, and the shouts and whistles of the men mounted up to us. The horizon was quite clear, not enveloped in haze, as it frequently was; its outlines were exceedingly sharply drawn; silver-white, sun-lighted summits towered up above and behind one another; generally the fields of eternal snow gleam in blue tints of varying intensity, now dull and now dark according to the angle of the slope in relation to the sun’s altitude; now shade and light pass gradually and insensibly into each other, now they are sharply defined. Here physical laws work out their perfect complicated scheme, exacting absolute obedience. On a shelf below us a part of the caravan halts and puffs; the animals appear like black spots on the snow. Up here the south-west wind enwraps us in swiftly passing clouds of whirling snowflakes.

All this agitated sea of the highest mountains in the world seems singularly uniform as the eye passes unhindered over its crests. You conceive that no summit rises above a certain maximum height, for before its head lifts itself above the crowd, wind and weather, denudation, have worn it down. In this the mountains are like ocean waves; when these, too, rise in foaming wrath, their undulations, seen from the ship’s deck, are of equal height, and the horizon is a straight line; and it is just the same with the small ridges between the furrows thrown up by the plough, which are all of uniform height; so that the field seems in the distance quite level.

The horizon seemed to be very far off; nearer heights broke the sky-line only to the north and north-east, hiding those behind, and in this direction thick clouds were hanging, white above and dark and bluish underneath, and lay like soft cushions on the earth. There was, then, no suggestion of a plateau, but far in the north a mountain range seemed to rise right up to heaven. In the north-west a main crest was plainly visible, starting from our point of observation, that is, the height on which we stood. This is the Karakorum range. The whole ridge here took the form of a rounded back, without solid rock, and intersected by numerous small valleys, all starting from the crest, and cutting gradually deeper and deeper into its flanks. The main ridge winds like a snake over the highlands, and the erosion valleys diverge on all sides like the boughs of a tree. Here horizontal lines predominate in the landscape, but lower down, in the peripheral region, vertical lines catch the eye, as in the Chang-chenmo lateral valleys. Down there the scenery is more imposing and picturesque, up here the surface of the earth appears rather flat; here is the abode of storms, and their boundless playground in the long dark winter nights.

55. In the Snow, N.E. of Chang-lung-yogma.

56. My Tent.

57. Lake Lighten.

Chilled through to the bones we walked down to the pass gap, where the whole caravan was assembled; here the height was 18,963 feet, and the temperature 2° above freezing-point. The men were too tired to sing, but we had good reason to be satisfied, for all the animals had got up safely with their burdens. We slowly descended along a small valley running northwards. The ground consisted entirely of mud, in which the animals sank at every step, and in the footprints they left behind muddy grey water collected immediately. Round about us lay a chaos of comparatively low, flat hills, furrowed everywhere by clefts which indicate landslips. A tiny rivulet winds silently down the middle of the valley without forming rapids. For the rest, all the country was flooded, and so we had no immediate fear of scarcity of water.

Where we encamped not a blade of grass could be seen; there was, therefore, no object in letting the horses run about loose, so they were tied together in couples, and had to stand waiting till the sun went down. Then Guffaru sat down on a rug, had a sack of maize placed before him, filled a wooden bowl with the grain, and emptied it into a nose-bag, which a Ladaki hung on the muzzle of a horse. And so the men ran about till all the animals had received their rations, and the dry, hard maize corns cracked under the teeth of the hungry beasts. The Ladak horses positively refused to eat maize, and were given barley instead; they whinnied with delight when the bags were brought, but the pleasure did not last long; the chewing gradually ceased, and with lowered heads and blinking eyes they wearily waited for the long night.

Some spare horses were laden with dry yapkak plants; at camp No. 2 there was not a particle of fuel. We were now at a height of 18,215 feet.

In the morning we took leave of Chenmo, the Kotidar of Tankse, and Zambul, the Numberdar of Pobrang, who turned back here. They would be able to enjoy warm winds and bright sunny days again. Besides a liberal reward for their valuable services they each received a testimonial in flattering terms. They took my letters with them, and were to give the messengers instructions about the route, should they fall in with them. Our party was thereby diminished by six men, three horses, and seven yaks (Illustration 46).

There were now only three men in my detachment, namely, myself, Robert on horseback, and Rehim Ali on foot. We turned with the brook to the north, and had hilly elevations on both sides. The country was, as it were, dead—not a blade of grass, not a track of a strayed antelope; all organic life seemed to be banished from the neighbourhood. But when we had advanced a little further we found signs of the visits of man. A faint light streak on the ground seemed to be a path which had not been used for a long time, and beside it stood a cylindrical cairn surmounted by a slab of stone. At one spot, too, lay several skulls of horses and yaks; yet hunters, they say, never wander hither. Perhaps it was a memento of the cartographical work of the Survey of India, or was connected with the European pioneers who many years ago travelled backwards and forwards between Eastern Turkestan and India.

The weather was quite Tibetan. One shower of hail after another chilled us through, and drove a cold douche into our faces, but the sun was always shining somewhere within sight. Long sheets of hail fell from the clouds, which seemed of very insignificant volume, but they could not whiten the ground. It seemed dry as tinder, in contrast to the wet slopes on either side of the Karakorum Pass. Dust even rose now and then behind the horses. Far in front of us we saw two dark points on the yellowish-grey land—they were a horse and its guide which had lingered behind the others.

The long procession of the caravan moved extremely slowly along the descent. It made a halt, so pasturage had been found! Ah, no—the soil was just as barren here as along the other 12 miles we had travelled this day. So, as yesterday, the horses had to stand tied together, and the nose-bags of barley and maize were strapped round their necks.

In the twilight I summoned Muhamed Isa to a council of war.

“How long can the animals hold out, if we find no pasture?”

“Two months, sir; but we shall find grass before then.”

“If the marches are no longer than to-day’s we shall take ten days to reach Lake Lighten, which Sahib Wellby discovered twenty years ago, and the route lies through Ling-shi-tang and Aksai-chin, which are some of the most desolate regions in all Tibet.”

“Then we will try to make forced marches, to get through the bad country as quickly as possible; in the neighbourhood of Yeshil-kul the grazing is good, according to Sonam Tsering, who has been there.”

“How goes it with the animals?”

“They are in good condition—only a horse and a mule are tired out, but we will let them travel awhile without loads. As for the rest, their loads are a little heavier now that we no longer have the seven yaks. But that will soon right itself.”

“How are the hired horses?”

“They are all right except two, which are on their last legs, and which we shall soon lose.”

“See that the animals are spared as much as possible and are well cared for.”

“You may depend on me, nothing will be neglected. In camps like this they get more maize and barley than usual, but where there is pasturage we will be more sparing of our supplies.”

On September 3 the level plateau was hidden in snowdrift and mist, and it was hard to decide in which direction to proceed: we agreed, however, that none of us should lose sight of the brook, for apparently no other water was to be found. We had not gone far when snow began to fall, a sharp south-west wind arose, and the whirling snowflakes hid even the nearest hills. It now snowed so thickly that we were afraid of missing the track of the caravan, which was far in front of us. According to the English map we could not be far from a small salt lake, but in this weather we were unable to obtain any notion of the lie of the land, and it was no use to climb a hill in order to look round. We sat in the saddle pelted with snow, but the snow soon thawed on our clothes, leaving an unpleasant smell of dampness behind.

But this weather did not last long; the heavy dark blue and purple clouds parted asunder like curtains, and continued their rapid course to the east; the view was clear again. Some scouts, who had gone in advance, discovered some fine yapkak plants on the left bank of the river, and our hungry animals were glad to put up with these. Three antelope tracks we crossed were regarded as a good sign; there must be pasturage somewhere about, but where?

The next day’s march led us over an apparently level plain, begirt by a ring of mountains, and our direction was on the whole north-east. We started simultaneously. I rode all along the caravan, which made a fine show. The animals did not march in file but in scattered troops, and their footprints combined to form a broad highway. The mules keep up bravely, and are always in the van. Several of the horses are suffering, and lie down from time to time, only to be roused up immediately by the Ladakis. Muhamed Isa leads the way on foot; he is the lodestone which draws after it the whole company.

Now we tried to cross the broad swampy bed of the stream. Muhamed Isa mounted his horse, but his steed sank in up to the belly; we had to give up the attempt and follow the bank instead. At times we had to cross side channels with the same treacherous ground. When the pilot had shown the way, some laden mules followed; then the other animals came all together. They sank up to the knee in the squelching ooze, and the ground behind them looked like an indiarubber sponge.

At ten o’clock the daily storm set in. In the north-west its outer margin was marked with great sharpness. It rolled, huge, black, and heavy, over the plateau. Now the storm is over our heads and its first black fringes swallow up the blue expanses of the sky. Two ravens, which have faithfully followed us for some days, croak hoarsely; a few small birds skim twittering over the ground. The hail lashes us with terrible violence; it comes from the side, and the animals turn their tails to the storm, and thus leave the trail, and have to be driven again into the right direction. We do not know where we are going. I halt with Muhamed Isa for a moment’s rest on a hill.

58 a, 58 b. Pantholops Antelope.

59, 60. Ovis Ammon.

Sketches by the Author.

“It would be better if we filled some goatskin sacks with water, in case we lose sight of the stream,” he suggests to me.

“No, let us go on; it will soon clear up, and then we can consider the matter.”

And the train moves on in spite of the drifting snow and the wintry darkness. It grows light, and the eyes survey unhindered the dreary, hilly, snow-covered land; westwards extend the plains of Ling-shi-tang; to the south-east stretches the immense Karakorum range with peaks covered with eternal snow, where thunder rolls among blue-black leaden clouds. Soon this storm also reaches us, and we are enveloped in dense, fine, dry snowflakes, while the darkness of night reigns around us. I am riding at the tail of the train. The caravan is divided into four columns. We travel in the wake of the last, which looks almost black through the mist; the one in front of it appears as a dirty grey patch; the next is hardly perceptible, and the foremost is almost quite invisible. Muhamed Isa has vanished. The snow now changes into large feathery flakes, which sweep almost horizontally over the ground. All is silent in our company; no one speaks: the men walk with their bodies bent forward and their fur caps drawn over their ears. The whole party looks now like snow men, and the snow makes the loads heavier for the animals than they need be.

At last our old friend, the brook, peeped out again from the duskiness, and we pitched our camp on the bank. Tsering discovered abundance of yapkak plants close at hand—some green, to which the animals were led, others dry, and very acceptable as fuel. In the evening there were 5½ degrees of frost. The moonlight fell in sheaves of rays through an atmosphere full of fine snow crystals. Absolute silence! One can hear the puppies’ hearts beat, the ticking of the chronometer, the cold of night descending and penetrating into the earth.

The country we marched through on September 5 was good and level, especially near a small lake, which now showed its blue surface in the south-east. Like all other salt lakes in Tibet it seems to be drying up, for we travelled for some distance over its dry muddy bed, and saw, higher up, plainly marked old terraced banks. Muhamed Isa reported that an exhausted mule would probably not be able to cross a pass in a small ridge which barred our way. It managed, however, to get over, and came into camp in the evening, but was thin and exhausted. Two Pantholops antelopes, easily distinguishable by their long, lyre-shaped horns, sped away southwards, and we came across a wolf’s spoor. In some spots the pasture was so good that we halted a few minutes to let the animals feed. We were sometimes tempted to pitch our camp, but yet we passed on. At last we bivouacked in an expansion of the valley with a stagnant creek, yapkak, and thin grass. We had scarcely hoped to find these three things so necessary to us—pasturage, fuel, and water, so soon and so close to the Karakorum. In this camp, No. 6, we decided to give the animals a day’s rest after all their exertions (Illustrations 58 a, 58 b).

On September 7, at daybreak, six miserable jades were picked out from the hired horses, and, as their loads were already consumed, were allowed to return home with their two guides. The sick mule lay dead. The sky was perfectly cloudless and the day became burning hot. In another respect we entered on new conditions, for, though we had covered 19 miles, we had not seen a drop of water before we reached the place where our camp was pitched. It seemed not unlikely that the monsoon clouds would come no more over the Karakorum, and then scarcity of water might render our situation very critical.

The direction of the march was determined for us by open country lying between low, round, reddish hills. The ground would have been excellent if field-mice had not undermined it, so that the horses continually stepped into the holes and almost fell on their noses. The mice certainly did not show themselves, but it was too early in the year for their winter sleep. The broad valley opened into a colossal cauldron, skirted on all sides by grand mountains, a regular Meidan, as the men of Turkestan call such a valley. To the north the mountains between the Karakash and Yurungkash lift up their lofty peaks, and in the south the Karakorum diverges farther and farther from our course.

Antelopes career over the plain in light flying leaps; they stand motionless, watching us, but as soon as we come near dart off as though on steel springs, and soon vanish in the distance.

A mountain spur in front of us seemed a suitable point to make for, where water would surely be found. But hours passed and it seemed no nearer. A dying horse detained me; he was relieved of his load, but he was quite done for. I was very sorry for him, and regretted that he could not come with us any farther. I stayed awhile to keep him company, but the day was passing, and the two men who were with him were ordered to cut his throat if he could not get on. My Ladakis thought it dreadful to desert a horse as long as it lived; its death-struggle might last for hours, and its last moments would be horrible if wolves got wind of it. It was a tall, black Yarkand horse; in the evening its number was entered in the list of the dead.

The caravan was moving in a black line to a ravine between the hills, where a faint greenish tinge seemed to indicate grass. A short time after, however, it came down again and marched out of sight; probably there was no water there. Another fairly long space of time went by before we distinguished on the plain westwards small black spots and lines, whether wild asses or our own mules we could not determine. The field-glass would not reach so far. At the foot of a mountain in the west shone a silvery brook, but it was a long way off, and all distances were so great that the atmospheric effect misled us, and what we took for a caravan might be only a shadow on an erosion terrace.

But Robert’s sharp eyes detected the smoke of a signal fire at the foot of the mountain. The caravan had, then, reached it and set the camp in order, and after a ride of an hour straight across the plain we joined it. Here the height was 16,250 feet.

We were now in a country belonging to the unannexed region Aksai-chin, in north-west Tibet. Or tell me to what Power this land belongs? Does the Maharaja of Kashmir lay claim to it, or the Dalai-Lama, or is it a part of Chinese Turkestan? No boundaries are marked on the map, and one looks in vain for boundary stones. The wild asses, the yaks, and the swift-footed antelopes are subject to no master, and the winds of heaven do not trouble themselves about earthly boundary marks. From here, therefore, I could move eastwards without acting in direct opposition to the wishes of the English Government, and the Chinese would certainly forgive me for not using their passport.

The distant mountains in the north, which had but now stood out in rosy colours like rows of houses in a great city, now grew pale in the grey twilight, and the grand contours were obliterated as another night spread its dark wings over the earth. A flute sounded softly and sweetly among the tents, and its tones lulled our weary wanderers to rest.

The following morning the camp looked unusually small, for the hired horses and mules had remained behind on the plain, where their guides had found water by digging. They were thus spared a considerable detour. As a precaution we took a couple of goatskin vessels full of water, and filled all the bottles and cans. Just before starting we saw our Ladakis lying full length by the overflow of the spring thoroughly quenching their thirst, and the horses were allowed as much water as they liked.

This day’s route was excellent, firm and level; the great trunk road in India could not be better, and hardly a highway in Sweden. Masses of clouds appeared from the east round to the south-west; a storm was probably raging in the Karakorum, but its outskirts never reached us. Here the ground was dry, and the exceedingly fine dust stirred up by the caravan hung like steam over the earth. The other columns, like ourselves, made for a goal previously agreed upon, a mountain spur in the north-east. As we approached it, we speculated whether we should see beyond it Aksai-chin, the lake Crosby passed in 1903.

61. A Gully at Camp 8 (Aksai-chin).

North of the spur a large flat plain extends, and here the mirage was marvellously perplexing. The mountains seemed to be reflected in a perfectly calm lake, but the surface did not look like water—it was bright, light and airy; it was as transitory as a play of colours in the clouds, and seemed as though it had a foundation of transparent glass. The mule caravan, now in front of us, was also the sport of the mirage: we saw it double as if it also were passing beside a lake.

At last we reached the spur and rested there awhile. Robert climbed up the side to look for the expected lake; as he came down the detritus began to move, our horses were frightened and wildly stampeded towards the east. Fortunately, they followed the track of the caravan, which was in the act of pitching the camp. The grazing at camp No. 8 was the best we had seen since Pobrang, and water was obtained by digging at a depth of 22 inches. Kulans had supplied the fuel, for their dung was plentiful. The place was so comfortable that we remained here the following day, and made an excursion to an elevation of sandstone and conglomerate almost in the form of an upturned dish, which stands on the south of the plain and turns its sharply clipped margin to the north. On the top Muhamed Isa erected a cairn—he had a mania for cairns. Little did I dream then that I should see these landmarks again a year and a half later (Illustration 61).

At dawn next day we made another advance into the forbidden land. The air was not quite clear, and we saw it quivering over the ground; but above it was clearer, for the crests of the mountains were more sharply defined than their feet. We marched eastwards; on our right was blood-red conglomerate, which lay upon green schists. On the left the lake was now visible, its deep blue surface contrasting vividly with the dull tones which prevailed elsewhere. The sight of a lake was refreshing; it gave the crowning touch to the scene. The country was open eastwards to the horizon; only in the far distance one snowy mountain appeared in this direction, but probably our longitudinal valley extended along the north or south side of this elevation. In short, the land was as favourable as it was possible to be, and remained so for several days; and I suspected that Lake Lighten, the Yeshil-kul, and the Pul-tso, known from Wellby’s, Deasy’s, and Rawling’s travels, lay in this valley, which in every respect was characteristic of the Tibetan highlands.

The ground was like a worm-eaten board; the holes of the field-mice lay so close together that all attempts to avoid them were vain. Even on the intervals between them one was not safe. Frequently the roof of a subterranean passage, consisting of dry loose soil mixed with gravel, broke in. Robert once made a somersault with his horse. These troublesome rodents, which live on the roots of the yapkak plants and grass, are very irritating.

The caravan had camped close to the shore, beside splendid water, which a brook poured down in great abundance into the salt lake. Late in the evening we saw a fire burning in the far distance. Was it another traveller, or had hunters wandered thus far? No, it was some of our own people, who were watching the animals and had kindled a fire to keep themselves warm. There were no men in this desolate country but ourselves.