The Sclav race and the Yellow race have come into contact.
We may as well have a little book learning on the subject; but it is not I that speak, but Major Noltitz.
The travelers of the Aryan people have all attempted to explore the plateau of the Pamir.

Without going back to Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, what do we find?
The English with Forsyth, Douglas, Biddulph, Younghusband, and the celebrated Gordon who died on the Upper Nile; the Russians with Fendchenko, Skobeleff, Prjevalsky, Grombtchevsky, General Pevtzoff, Prince Galitzin, the brothers Groum-Grjimailo; the French with Auvergne, Bonvalot, Capus, Papin, Breteuil, Blanc, Ridgway, O'Connor, Dutreuil de Rhins, Joseph Martin, Grenard, Edouard Blanc; the Swedes with Doctor Swen-Hedin.
This Roof of the World, one would say that some devil on two sticks had lifted it up in his magic hand to let us see its mysteries.

We know now that it consists of an inextricable entanglement of valleys, the mean altitude of which exceeds three thousand metres; we know that it is dominated by the peaks of Gouroumdi and Kauffmann, twenty-two thousand feet high, and the peak of Tagarma, which is twenty-seven thousand feet; we know that it sends off to the west the Oxus and the Amou Daria, and to the east the Tarim; we know that it chiefly consists of primary rocks, in which are patches of schist and quartz, red sands of secondary age, and the clayey, sandy loess of the quaternary period which is so abundant in Central Asia.
The difficulties the Grand Transasiatic had in crossing this plateau were extraordinary.

It was a challenge from the genius of man to nature, and the victory remained with genius.

Through the gently sloping passes which the Kirghizes call "bels," viaducts, bridges, embankments, cuttings, tunnels had to be made to carry the line.