3-065-967 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Yarkund Mission: Valley of the Shyok, 1874. Engraving from a sketch by Captain E. F. Chapman during the '...toilsome journey [of the British diplomatic mission] from the Indus valley up the Shyok and over the Karakorum..Captain Chapman writes: "The glacier system of the Shyok is a very remarkable one. The head waters of the river spring from the great Reino Mer de Glace, a magnificent expanse of ice, at the head of which two giant peaks rear themselves to elevations approaching 28,000 ft.; and within a distance of twenty miles two other mighty glaciers feed the stream, which continues its course to join the Indus. Each of these glaciers, the upper and lower Kumdalun, has pushed right across the valley, the river making a way for itself through these formidable barriers. The route...is only practicable during the dry season of the autumn, when the glacier is passed by fording through the river its entire breadth, or [in] winter, when the frozen waters are easily traversed. In 1841 the choking of the stream by the downward movement of the glacier, and the subsequent outpouring of the waters pent up in the upper portion of the Shyok valley, caused an inundation, the effects of which were observable at Attock, twenty-six miles from Peshawur".' From "Illustrated London News", 1874.