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Wood's Journal to the River Orus.
MARCH
ART. III. A personal narrative of a Journal to the river Oxus, by the route of the Indus, Kabul, and Badakshan, &c., &c.; by lieutenant John Wood, of the E. 1. Co.'s navy.
WHEN the traveler has ascended up the valley of the Oxus to its fountain-head, he stands upon the 'Roof of the World,' or the Bam-i- Dúniah. There lies the lake called by the natives Sir-i-kol, in the form of a crescent, about fourteen miles long from east to west, by an average breadth of one mile, from whose western end issues the Oxus or Jihun. This point-the western end of the lake-our traveler found to be in latitude 37° 27′ N., by meridian altitude of the sun, and longitude 73° 40′ E. by protraction from Langer Kish, where his last set of chronometric observations had heen obtained. Its elevation, measured by the temperature of boiling water, is 15,600 feet. On three sides it is bordered by swelling hills, about 500 feet high, while along its southern bank they rise into mountains 3,500 feet above the lake, or 19,000 above the sea, and are covered with perpetual snow, from which never-failing source the lake is supplied.
It was on the 19th of February, 1838, that lieut. Wood reached this elevated site; the next day, the 20th "after getting a clear and beautiful meridian altitude of the sun," and casting a last look at the lake, he entered the defile leading to Wakhan. The hills and moun- tains encircling this lake give rise to some of the principal rivers in Asia. Our author says:
"In walking over the lake, I could not but reflect how many countries owe their importance and their wealth to rivers the sources of which can be traced to the lonely mountains which are piled up on its southern argiu. This elevated chain is common to India, China and Turkistan; and from it, as from a central point, their several streams diverge, each augmenting as it rolls onwards, until the ocean and the lake of Aral receive the swollen tribute, again to be given up, and in a circuit as endless as it is wonderful to be swept back by the winds of heaven, and showered down in snowy flakes upon the self-same mountains from which it flowed. How strange and how interesting a group would be forined if an individual from each nation whose rivers have their first source in Pamir were to meet upon its summit; what varieties would there be in person, language, and manners; what contrasts between the rough, untamed, and fierce mountaineer and the more civilized and effeminate dweller on the plain; how much of virtue and of vice, under a thousand different aspects, would be met with among all; and how strongly would the conviction press upon the mind that the me- horation of the whole could result only from the diffusion of early education and a purer religion !
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