Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1924-01-30

&Prepared by the National Geogra phic So
ciety, Washington, D. c.
Continual reports from Moscow that
ahe soviet government is seeking to
Become a leader of Asiatic peoples
arouse interest in Fergana, the coun-
ary which was the Russian empires
deepest southeastern wedge driven into
Asia, a country of deserts and GASES,
towering mountains and picturesque
valleys, where the territories of Rus
sian, Chinese and Briton almost meet
Fergana, formerly Kokan, has
numerous bids to fame, but among
ahem two stand out It's northern fer
tile valleys and GASES constituted the
heart of Russia's cotton producing
country; and it's borders south and
east marked the terminal moraine, so
10 speak, of the great Slav glacier
which had moved slowly down through
Asia, bringing it's deposit of Russian
dominion and culture, until it hung
over both India and China.
The southern portion of Fergana is
a sort of Russian Kashmir, with the
delightful vale left out-a country of
high but deep valleys and towering
peaks, bleak slopes and sparkling
2akes. 1t is, in fact, the reverse to
hashmir's diverse in so far as the
more rugged portions of Kashmir are
concerned, for it lies just over the
mountain divide from that better
known land of towering peaks; so
close that q Titan-or a Big Bertha if
one might be gotten there-might hurl
missile from Russian to British terri
aOry. Only narrow strip Of Afghan
land, reserved to Afghanistan because
of the long jealousy and diplomatic
struggle between Britain and the old
Russian empire, lies between. In
places it is as narrow as twenty miles.
} The southern portion of Fergana
" the Pamir, or, more properly, the
PaLnirS. 1t has a Persian name also
chat has intrigued the worlds interest,
Bom-i-Dunya, Roof of the World"
Toward the middle of the Nineteenth
century, the Pamirs, to which scant
attention has been given before, be-
came the worlds mystery region. The
meager references to it in the writ
sngs Of early Chinese Buddhist pill
grims were ferreted out, together with
shose of Marco Polo and other daunt-
3ess early travellers who had crossed
she forbidding region. Agents of the
British Indian government were sent
,on secret expeditions to survey the
area from Kashmir northward; and
after Russia absorbed the Khanate of
!Kokan in 1876 and fell heir to its
claims to the northern Pamirs, Rus
sian explorers began to penetrate the
mystery region from the north. Thus
there was born the great rivalry be-
aween Russia and Britain in central
Asia which gave rise to mutual sus-
'On several occasions.
Lofty Valleys Almost UnpeopIed.
1t was found, when the observations
of the various explorers were pieced
together, that the Pamirs made up an
almost unpeopled country of such
nigh altitude and severe climate that
habited. "Pamir" has been generally
accepted to mean valley. at the foot
ef mountains" and the Pamirs, cover
Eng an area roughly $50 miles square,
are a series of these characteristic
valleys, their river-fed floors mountain
high when compared to the mountains
of most other lands, with snow
n1o al al
several thousand feet above them.
The bottoms of practically all the
Pamirs are at least 1900 feet high
and some are over 10000
Only few hundred Kirghiz nomads
wander over the region in summer,
living in their hemispherical felt tent
nuts, and making for the lower coun-
try, whether, India, Afghanistan,
China or Russia, in the winter. For
mine months of the year mountains and
valleys alike are wrapped in Arctic
Ike cold, everything covered with a
heavy blanket Of snow and ice.
Once imperial Russia got possession
of the Pamirs In 1898, she drew even
fighter about it the cloak of secrecy
that Nature had all along maintained.
Jet it became known, though, the re-
ports strained the credulity of British
explorers, that military roads were
1raYersing what had appeared to be
impossible terrain. They reached out
from the railroads of northern Fer
CANA through gorges and over lofty
passes into the Pamirs, and over them
II was not impossible to drag artillery
TO the very threshold Of British India.
Few persons other than trusted i'm
4erialists were permitted to traverse