Note 1236 — Chapter XV · —Mountain Barriers And Their Passes

Genuine mountain passes have only emergency inhabitants—the monks and dogs of the hospice, the road-keepers in their refuge huts or cantonière, or the garrison of a fort guarding these important thoroughfares. The flanking valleys of approach draw to themselves the human life of the mountains. Their upper settlements show a certain common physiognomy, born of their relation to the barren transit region above, except in those few mountain districts of advanced civilization where railroads have introduced through traffic over the barrier. At the foot of the final ascent to the pass, where often the carriage road ends and where mule-path or foot-trail begins, is located a settlement that lives largely by the transmontane travel. It is a place of inns, hostelries, of blacksmith shops, where in the busy season the sound of hammer and anvil is heard all night; of stables and corrals crowded with pack and draft animals; of storehouses where the traveler can provide himself with food for the journey across the barren, uninhabited heights. It is the typical outfitting point such as springs up on the margin of any pure transit region, whether mountain or desert. Such places are Andermatt and Airolo, lying at an altitude of 4000 feet or more on the St. Gotthard road, St. Moritz below the Maloja Pass, Jaca near the Pass de Canfranc over the Pyrenees, Kugiar and Shahidula1236 at an elevation of 10,775 feet or 3285 meters on the road up to the Karakorum Pass (18,548 feet or 5655 meters), which crosses the highest range of the Himalayas between Leh in the upper Indus Valley and Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan.