THE INDUS VALLEY AND THIRD JOURNEY TO DIAMIRAI NULLAH

Our route with the coolies was to skirt along the lower slopes of Nanga Parbat as near the snow line as possible. This would lead us first into the Ganalo nullah, and thence to the Rakiot nullah. There we had arranged to meet Mummery by the side of the glacier. Having crossed the Diamirai glacier, we went straight up the opposite side of the valley for a pass on the ridge south-east of a pointed rock peak at the head of the Gonar nullah. This peak we have named the Gonar peak, and the pass the Red pass (about 16,000 feet). From this pass a superb view of the head of the Diamirai nullah was obtained, whilst to the south and south-west a beautifully shaped snow mountain, beyond the Lubar glacier, probably the Thosho peak, shone in the sunlight over the Goman Singh pass. To the east we saw for the first time the great Chongra peaks on the north-east of Nanga Parbat. On the north side of our pass snow slopes stretched down some hundreds of feet to a small glacier. Some of the coolies tried an impromptu glissade here, and seemed rather pleased at the result; but it was a dangerous experiment, for various rocks and stones awaited their arrival at the bottom. At last in the dark after much trouble we managed to get down far enough to collect wood for our camp fires, and put up our tent by the side of a small stream.

Next day it was found necessary to climb up again at least 1000 feet before descending about 2500 feet on to the snout of the Ganalo glacier. This we crossed on the ice. On the far bank most luxuriant vegetation covered the hill-side, and for a long time we climbed rapidly upwards through woods of pines, birches, and other trees till the rhododendrons were reached late in the afternoon. Still we pushed on, hoping to get over into the Rakiot nullah, for perhaps Mummery would be there awaiting tents and food. But the coolies were dead beat; therefore, when we were still more than 1000 feet below the col, we were forced to camp beyond the limit of the brushwood in an open grass valley.

Next day we went over the pass, about 16,500 feet, into the Rakiot nullah. From the summit a splendid view of the Rakiot glacier and the northern side of Nanga Parbat could be seen. Never have I seen a glacier that presented such a sea of stormy ruin; the waste of frozen billows stretched ever upwards towards the ice-slopes that guarded the topmost towers of the great mountain. Thunder and rain welcomed us, and amidst dripping trees and cold mist our camp was pitched on the true left bank of the glacier. From the top of the last pass we had come over we could see the great face down which Mummery and the Gurkhas would have had to come had they reached the Diama pass. It seemed to us quite hopeless. I spent about half an hour looking through a powerful telescope for any traces of steps cut down the only ridge that looked at all feasible. I could see none. Hastings and I were therefore of the opinion that Mummery had turned back. This he had told us he intended to do should he find the pass either dangerous or very difficult, for, as he pointed out, he was not going to risk anything on an ordinary pass. Moreover, he had expressly taken sufficient food with him, leaving it at the upper camp, so that should he have to return and follow our footsteps he would have enough to last him for three days. In the Rakiot nullah we could find no traces of him. Lor Khan and Rosamir were at once sent back into the Ganalo nullah to meet Mummery with extra food, Hastings and I in the meantime exploring some distance up the valley. The day was more or less wet, with the mists lying low down on the mountains. It cleared, however, in the evening. The next two days were also wet and disagreeable. We were beginning to get anxious, and when on the 29th Lor Khan and the coolie returned, having seen nothing of Mummery, something had to be done.

The Diama Pass from the Rakiot Nullah.

We imagined that when the pass had proved to be too difficult, Mummery had turned back to the high camp where the food had been left. From there he would follow our route, but as the weather had been wretched, with mist lying over all the hills, perhaps he had missed his way. Or perhaps he might have sprained an ankle and be still in the Diamirai nullah. It was therefore agreed that Hastings should return towards the Diamirai nullah, and as my time was nearly at an end, if I wished to get back to England by the end of September, I should make my way to Astor as quickly as I could. Once there, I could wait a few days, and Hastings promised that as soon as possible he would send a coolie down to the nearest spot on the Gilgit-Chilas road, where there was a telegraph-station, and telegraph the news to me at Astor.

Thus we parted company, Hastings returning along our old route to the Diamirai, whilst I with a coolie and the cook set off for Astor.

About a mile down the valley we were met by some of the wild folk from Gor, a village on the opposite side of the Indus. These inhabitants of Gor have a somewhat evil reputation. Not many years before, an officer out shooting in one of their nullahs was nearly murdered. They did succeed in killing his shikari who was with him, but he himself escaped owing to the lucky appearance of some soldiers from Gilgit who were going down the valley of the Indus towards Chilas. Bruce also had some experience of these turbulent tribesmen when stopping at Darang, on the banks of the Indus below Gor; for whilst partridge-shooting in the hill-sides the beaters had to be armed with rifles, and played the double rÔle of protecting Bruce and driving the game. The Gor shepherds that I met were, I believe, the only ones on the south side of the Indus. Owing to the rich pasturage in the Rakiot nullah, they kept sheep and goats there. I must say they treated me very well, and two of them accompanied me for a couple of days, carrying the rucksacks and showing us the way.

The Chongra Peaks from the Red Pass.

The first night we slept in an old and disused shepherd's encampment high up, just at the limits of the pines. Next day we had to descend by most precipitous slopes to the bottom of the Buldar nullah. Our second night was spent high up on the eastern slopes of the nullah and short of the pass which was called the Liskom pass by the natives.

On the next day we crossed this pass (about 16,000 feet). The view of the Chongra peaks from here is most striking, backed as it is by the great upper snow-field of the Rakiot glacier and Nanga Parbat behind. Just across the Astor valley to the east rises the Dichil peak, a terrific, double-headed rock pinnacle that is certainly over 20,000 feet high.

These obliging Gor shepherds had accompanied us thus far, but no amount of persuasion could induce them to go one step further. At last, becoming frightened, they put the bags down on the snow and fled down the hill-side back to the Buldar nullah, and I was unable to give them anything for all their kindness. That afternoon, 1st September, I reached Dashkin on the Gilgit road, and was back again in civilised country. From there I made my way to Astor.

It was on the 5th of September that I received a telegram from Hastings. He had returned to the Diamirai nullah without finding Mummery. The camp there was just as we had left it. Next day, 1st September, he made his way up the glacier to the high camp under Nanga Parbat with Rosamir and Lor Khan; there he found the extra provisions and some other things exactly as they had been placed by Mummery on the morning of the 24th There was only one conclusion to draw—Mummery, Ragobir, and Goman Singh had been killed somewhere up the glacier that lies between the Ganalo peak and Nanga Parbat. For there was absolutely no way out, except the way they had gone in. The Diama pass over to the Rakiot nullah we knew to be impossible on the eastern face, on the south lay Nanga Parbat, whilst on the north was the Ganalo peak, 21,500 feet high. If, therefore, they never returned for the provisions, some catastrophe must have overtaken them during their attempt to climb over the pass.

From what I have seen of the valley, an avalanche falling from the north face of Nanga Parbat seems the most probable explanation; but in that vast ice world the hidden dangers are so many that any suggestion must necessarily be the merest guessing, and what happened we shall never know.

For Hastings to attempt to explore this glacier alone would have been a most hazardous and hopeless task. He had no one with him on whom he could rely, and the area to be explored was also far too large. His only alternative therefore was to go at once with the greatest speed possible to the nearest post where he knew an Englishman was, namely at Chilas. This he did, but it was not till the 5th of September that he reached Jiliper on the Indus and was able to telegraph to me at Astor.

In the meantime the villagers in the Bunar nullah had been ordered by the officer in command at Chilas to explore all the valleys round the Diamirai, and on the receipt of the telegram at Astor, Captain Stewart, the head political officer of the Gilgit district, sent word to the people in the Rupal nullah to do the same as far as the Mazeno La. I felt, however, that there was no help and no hope. Out of that valley up which Mummery had gone there was but one way: that was the one by which he had entered it; he had not returned, the provisions were untouched. It was a dreadful ending to our expedition. The mountains amongst which we had spent so many pleasant days together no longer were the same. The sunshine and the beauty were gone; savage, cruel, and inhospitable the black pinnacles of the ridges and the overhanging glaciers of cold ice filled my mind with only one thought. I could not stop at Astor. Moreover, by descending the valley I should at least meet Hastings sooner, for he was returning by forced marches to join me at Astor. On the 6th September we met at Doian. Beyond what he had already told me in his telegram there was nothing.

Together we returned to Astor to arrange our future movements. There we agreed that it was necessary to return to the Diamirai nullah at once, and together explore the upper part of the valley beyond the high camp. Provisions and ponies were hastily got, and after having arranged with Captain Stewart for as much help as possible, we started for the Diamirai by way of the Indus valley and the Bunar nullah.

The first day's march down the Astor valley brought us to Doian. There we were hospitably received by the officers of the Pioneer regiment, who, earlier in the year under Colonel Kelly, had marched over the Shandur pass to the relief of Chitral.

Below Doian the road descends rapidly by zigzags towards the Astor stream: soon all vegetation is left behind, and one enters a parched and barren land. The valley is hemmed in by precipitous cliffs on both sides, and the road in many places has been hewn and blasted out of the solid rock. Bones of horses strew the wayside, and occasionally a vulture will sail by. The heat becomes oppressive, and the glare from the hill-sides down which no water runs suggests a mountainous country in the Sahara.

Before this road was built, the old path led over the summit of the Hatu Pir, and the traveller now misses a marvellous view of Haramosh, Rakipushi, and the Indus valley by plunging down into this bare, desolate nullah, shut in on all sides by precipitous hills.

The small post of Ramghat, or Shaitan Nara, where this road finally emerges from the Astor nullah into the great valley of the Indus, is merely a post for guarding the suspension-bridge across the Astor stream. Here are stationed some Kashmir troops, and here it is that the roads to Chilas and Gilgit separate.

The Chilas road follows down the Indus on the left bank, through a country which probably has no equal in the world. How this astounding valley was formed it is difficult to say; but the valley is there, and a wilder, grander, more desolate, and more colossal rift cannot occur elsewhere on the earth's surface.

From the summit of Nanga Parbat to the waters of the Indus below is in depth nearly 24,000 feet. On the opposite side, the naked hill-sides rising in precipice after precipice are entirely barren of all vegetation. Waterworn into innumerable gullies and rock towers, they present a melancholy and arid appearance; and, although their summits are 12,000 feet above the Indus, they do not form a north side to this gorge in any way comparable with that on the south. The floor of the valley is filled with the debris of countless Himalayan deluges, yet the Indus looks like a small and dirty stream. To appreciate in any way the gigantic scale of the whole is quite impossible. What is the depth of that stealthily flowing flood and the measure of its waters, who can say? For it is more than six hundred miles from its source, and its tributaries sometimes are almost as big as itself. From the borders of Swat and Chitral, from the Darkot pass, from the Kilik beyond Hunza, and from the Hispar pass, the waters collect to form the Gilgit river, one only of the many tributaries of the Indus. This tract of the Mustagh range is nearly two hundred miles long by eighty broad. The Shigar river drains the waters from the Mustagh range and K², perhaps the greatest accumulation of ice and snow that exists outside the arctic regions. The Nubra and Shayok rivers collect their waters from a yet larger area. But still east of all these tributaries, the Indus itself rises three hundred miles away in those unknown lands of Tibet behind the Himalaya and near the source of that mysterious river of eastern India, the Bramaputra. Yet all these collected waters are penned into this apparently slow flowing and narrow river, as with silent but stealthy haste it twists and turns through the gigantic chasm at the base of Nanga Parbat. Once, not many years ago, in December 1840, into the upper end of this gorge the side of the Hatu Pir fell, forming a dam probably over 1000 feet high.[K] A lake was formed behind it for miles. The water rose to the level of Bunji fort, 300 feet above the river below, and up the Gilgit valley this lake, newly formed, reached nearly to Gilgit itself. For six months the waters were held back till, topping the vast accumulation, they burst the dam, 'and rushed in dark tumult thundering.' The lake is said to have emptied in one day. A small remnant of the barrier can still be seen near Lechre on the Chilas road.

The heat in this valley is so great after eleven o'clock in the day, that it is impossible to travel, and makes it necessary to seek what shade there may be till the sun has sunk low in the sky. The naked rocks glisten and tremble in the heat, the staring colours of the parched hill-sides, and the intense glare of the sun in this desert land, are in curious contrast to the shady valleys that lie thousands of feet up, hidden away in the recesses of the great mountain. But it is after the evening shadows have one by one lengthened, after the last glow of the hot orange sunset has at last faded out of the sky, and from out the darkness the rising moon lights up this deserted landscape with mysterious shadows and perplexing distances, that the whole scene becomes totally beyond description. The intricacy of form shown by the silent mountains seem to be some magnificent and great imagination from the mind of a Turner. The white moonlight, and the grotesque black shadows and leering pinnacles piercing the starlit sky, can only belong to a land dreamt of by a Gustave DorÉ as a fitting illustration to the Wandering Jew, and only be described by Shelley:—

But without doubt the dominant sensation in this strange land is that of fear and abhorrence; and what makes it all the more appalling is that this thing before one is there in all its nakedness; it has no reserve, there is nothing hidden. Its rugged insolence, its brutal savagery, and its utter disregard of all the puny efforts of man, crushes out of the mind any idea that this spot belongs to an ordinary world.

Whether in the day or the night it is the same. During the stifling hours of noon the valley sleeps in the scorching sunlight, but there, always there, is that monstrous flood below, slowly, ceaselessly moving. Occasionally the waters will send up an angry and deep-tongued murmur, when some huge eddy, rising to the surface, breaks, and belches out the waters that have come from the lowest depths.

At night in the stillness and the heat, as one lies unable to sleep, imagination runs riot; from out the inky shadows that seam the hill-sides in the pale moonlight, dragons and great creeping monsters seemingly appear crawling slowly down to drink at the ebon flood beneath. And imagination easily in restless dreams becomes reality, thus adding tenfold to the already accumulated horrors. But at last in the darkness—

suddenly a breath of cold air, as from heaven, descends like a splash of cool water. It has wandered down from the upper snows. Then a few moments later comes another; and, tired out, real sleep claims one at last.

Later, when one awakes, the morning sun has risen, sending his light slanting across the hill-sides with a promise that before he sets we may be delivered from the bottom of this singular abyss. No description, however, can possibly give an adequate idea of the immensity, the loneliness, and the feeling of the insignificance of human affairs that is produced by this valley of the Indus below Rhamghat.

It was not till the 13th that we reached Bunar Post, a small station for troops at the bottom of the Bunar nullah. Here we were met by Captain de Vismes, who was in command of the Chilas district. He had most kindly come from Chilas to help us with coolies up the Bunar nullah, and from there to the Diamirai nullah. From Bunar Post to our destination it took no less than three days' hard travelling; for as I have already pointed out, it is not possible to go straight up the valley. If we had been able to travel direct, it meant an ascent of some 9000 feet, but by the only possible route that existed, nearly double that height had to be climbed before we finally, on the 16th, found ourselves once more in the Diamirai nullah. What a change, however, met our gaze! The great masses of wild rose-trees that had welcomed us on our first visit were bare even of leaves. The willow groves now lifted gaunt, leafless branches into the chill air, and sighed mournfully when the cold wind shook them, and the rhododendrons were powdered with snow. Winter had set in, as the Chilas herdsmen had warned us it would, only a month before; and the contrast was all the more marked when compared with the temperature of nearly 100° in the shade, which existed a few miles away by the Indus.

Hastings and I soon saw that any attempt at exploration amongst the higher glaciers was out of the question. We went up the glacier as far as half-way to the old upper camp where the provisions had been found untouched, but even there it was wading through snow nearly a foot deep; ultimately we climbed through heavy powdery snow, perhaps 500 feet up the south side of the valley, to obtain a last look at the valley in which Mummery, Ragobir, and Goman Singh had perished. The avalanches were thundering down the face of Nanga Parbat, filling the air with their dust; and if nothing else had made it impossible to penetrate into the fastnesses of this cold, cheerless, and snow-covered mountain-land, they at least spoke with no uncertain voice, and bade us be gone. Slowly we descended, and for the last time looked on the great mountain and the white snows where in some unknown spot our friends lay buried.

But although Mummery is no longer with us, though to those who knew him the loss is irreparable, though he never can lead and cheer us on up the 'gaunt, bare slabs, the square, precipitous steps in the ridge, and the bulging ice of the gully,' yet his memory will remain—he will not be forgotten. The pitiless mountains have claimed him—and—amongst the snow-laden glaciers of the mighty hills he rests. 'The curves of the wind-moulded cornice, the delicate undulations of the fissured snow,' cover him, whilst the 'grim precipices, the great brown rocks bending down into immeasurable space,' and the snow-peaks he loved so well, keep watch, and guard over the spot where he lies.