d.
Skardu, on the left bank, was an independent capital down to 1840, and
its aspect is still stormy in a political as in a climatic sense. The
land looks like a petrified storm, the waves of granite and slate dotted
sporadically with huts and microscopic bits of culture. Only in a few of
the deep valleys is Nature less inhospitable. The glaciers descend to an
altitude of 13,500 feet, with an upward extent of twenty-five miles or
more; cultivation, after a fashion, existing at their lower edge, and
grass growing for a season of six or eight weeks much farther up. The
Baltoro glacier leads up to a stupendous peak, the second in height of
all known elevations, but not yet dignified with a name, being only
labelled in the Indian Survey "K. 2." Its height is 28,265 feet, or 687
less than Gaurisankar, the giant of mountains, a peak in the Eastern
Himaliya. The summits next to K.2 are from 25,000 to 27,000 feet. Among
them lies the pass of Mustagh, 18,300 feet above tide, up to 1863 a
high-road between India and Yarkand, practicable for but a few weeks of
summer. The brief interval left by the snow the brigands have
extinguished.

After the abandonment of this pass, that of Karakoram, forty leagues
east of it, became the principal route to Central Asia. The elevation is
exactly the same. Of the five hundred and fifteen miles, divided into
thirty-five marches, between Leh and Yarkand, a hundred and fifty
traverse ice, naked rocks and precipices, wholly devoid of grass or
fuel. Still farther east, in the extreme north-eastern angle of Ladakh
and the Kashmiri states, a third route to Turkestan has been opened. It
is longer than the others, but is practicable for near half the year,
and can be traversed by horses and two-humped camels instead of yaks and
ponies, as at the western crossings. On three stages only are wood and
grass absent. It ascends from the south over a plateau marked by salt or
brackish lakes. It is difficult to say which of the three contestant
empires, Russia, China and England, has easiest or least impracticable
access to the coveted core of Asia.

If the handful of Little Tibetans occupy the gallery of the Kashmiri
theatre, there are wells in it which go down to the level of the
dress-circle. These lower levels have traits of culture--trees, grass,
whitewashed brick or stone dwellings, and nunneries and religious
monuments on the roadside and sometimes arching the road. All, high and
low in rank and topogr