e to a mile broad. The
surface is very uneven and consists of innumerable knobs and pyramids of
clear ice.

I made several excursions on the glaciers of Mus-tagh-ata on foot or on
yaks. One must be well shod so as not to slip, and one must look out for
crevasses. Once we were stopped by a crevasse several yards broad and
forty-five feet deep. When we stooped over the brim and looked down, it
had the appearance of a dark-blue grotto with walls of polished glass,
and long icicles hung down from the edges. Streamlets of melted ice run
over the surface of the glacier, sometimes flowing quietly and gently as
oil in the greenish-blue ice channels, sometimes murmuring in lively
leaps. The water can be heard trickling and bubbling at the bottom of
the crevasses, and the surface brooks often form fine waterfalls which
disappear into chasms of ice. On warm days when the sun shines, thawing
proceeds everywhere, and the water trickles, bubbles, and runs all about
the ice. But if the weather is dull, cold, and raw, the glaciers are
quieter, and when winter comes with its severe cold they are quite hard
and still, and the brooks freeze into ice.

The yaks of the Kirghizes are wonderfully sure-footed, and one can ride
on them over slippery hillocky ice where a man could not possibly walk.
The yak thrusts down his hoofs so that the white powdered ice spurts up
around him, and if the slope is so steep that he cannot get foothold, he
stretches out all four legs and holds them stiff and rigid as iron and
thus slides down without tumbling. Sometimes I rode over moraine heaps
of huge granite blocks piled one upon another. Then I had to take a firm
grip with my knees, for the yak springs and jumps about like a lunatic.

Accompanied by specially selected Kirghizes, I tried four times to climb
to the top of the "Father of Ice-Mountains," but always without success.
Our camp was pitched high up among the moraines. Islam Bay, six
Kirghizes, and ten yaks were in readiness before sunrise, and we took
with us ample provisions, fur coats, spades and alpenstocks, food and a
tent. At first we climbed up over gravel, and then over snow which
became deeper the higher we went. As the air became rarer, respiration
was more difficult, and even the yaks halted frequently to recover their
breath. The Kirghizes walked on foot and urged the animals up towards
the giddy heights. It took us the whole day to reach a point 20,700 feet
above sea-level. At this po