Omaha daily bee., 1899-05-28

me rose the lofty, snow clad mountains
which grimly divide both these northern
waters from those which flow southwark into
India. What other spot could be more truly
called the heart of Asia! And interesting
as it is from its purely physical aspect,
from the wild grandeur of its scenery, the
mighty glaciers which fill it's valleys, the
eternal SHOWS which clothe the mountain
sides and the fantastic beauty of it's spotless
peaks, it is still more interesting through
the people who press around it.
From the banks of the Oxus, to which 1t
gives birth, arose the great Aryan race,
which spread over all Europe, Persia and
India, and some of the pure descendants of
which are to this day still living in the Sc
cluded valleys of this region, while on its
eastern borders dwelt the Scythan or Tar
tar tribes, who also swept in waves of i'm
migration to India and Joined in the tenn
pestuous inroads upon Europe.
Today We witness the great reflex move
ment-the return wave. The vast Russian
nation irresistibly rolling downward from
the north, the far-reaching British extending
their dominion upward from the SOUTH while
between these two active races the impassiye
Chinese, who for time had gained a footing
in the Roof of the World bid fair to be
pressed out altogether
What sort of a region, then, is this for
the dominion of which three empires con-
tend? OF what value Is it to either? Who
are the present inhabitants and whose au-
thority do they acknowledge? These were
the questions which l set myself to answer
on the three separate visits l paid to the
Pamirs from 1889 to 1891.
In the first place the region of the Pamrs
is not a plateau, as has SO often been i'm
agined-probably because it was so marked
generally fiat often from four to five miles
broad, and lying at elevations varying from
IL 900 to $1,000 feet above sea level From
these valleys the mountain ranges on either
side rise to heights of from 5000 to 5000
feet while in a few exceptional cases the
giant mountains tower up to total height
of q, 900 and $4,000 feet above the sea-
So elevated a region is OF course intensely
cold. Even in the summer there is scarcely
a month together which is free Of frost and
in the winter the temperature descends to
20, 80 and 40 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit,
Nowhere else have l felt such a cold as
there and Lord Dunmore, who has had ex-
perence of Russian, Arctic and Canadian
cold says that the Pamir cold, temperatures
being equal, is worse than any. This | felt
to be due to the rarefacton of the atmos-
phere, which of itself exhausts one and
diminishes the energy available for the re-
sistance of abnormal temperature.
Yet there are hardy nomadic races who
permanently inhabit this inhospitable re-
gion, driving about their focks from place
to place and pitching their round felt XII
bitka tents wherever a sufIlciency OF grass
for their animals and brushwood fuel for
domestic purposes may be found No cul-
tivatlon is, of course, possible on the Pa
mfrs proper and it is only on the out
skirts, where broad valleys, TO which the
term Pamirs is applied, have soped down
ward into lower attitudes and con-
sequently warmer regions, that there is any
profit to be obtained from tillng the soil.
But the hardy Kirghiz OF the Pamirs
scarcely require produce of the land. They
are quite content to live Tor weeks and
months together upon little else than what