Often the exchange point moves nearer the summit of the pass, dividing the journey more equally between the two areas of production. Here develops the temporary summer market. High up on the route between Leh and Yarkand is Sasar, a place of unroofed enclosures for the deposit of cotton, silk and other goods left there by the caravans plying back and forth between Leh and Sasar, or Sasar and Yarkand.[1242] Nearly midway on the much frequented trade route between Leh and Lhassa, at a point 15,100 feet (nearly 500 meters) above sea level, just below the Schako Pass, lies Gartok in western Tibet, in summer a busy market surrounded by a city of tents, and the summer residence of the two Chinese viceroys, who occupy the only two substantial dwellings in the place. Here at the end of August is held a great annual fair, which is attended by traders from India, Kashmir, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, China proper, and Lhassa; but by November the place is deserted. The traders disperse, and the few residents of Gartok, together with the viceroys, retire down the Indus Valley to the more sheltered village of Gargunza (14,140 feet or 4311 meters elevation), which represents the limits of permanent settlement in these altitudes.[1243] The Sutlej Valley route from the Punjab to Lhassa is capped near its summit at an altitude of about 5000 meters by the summer market, of Gyanema, whose numerous types of tents indicate the various homes of the traders from Lhassa to India.[1244]
Pass peoples.
Natural thoroughfares, whether river highways or mountain pass routes, draw to themselves migration, travel, trade and war. They therefore early assume historical importance. Hence we find that peoples controlling transmontane routes have always been able to exert an historical influence out of proportion to their size and strength; and that in consequence they early become an object of conquest to the people of the lowlands, as soon as these desire to control such transit routes. The power of these pass tribes is often due to the trade which they command and which compensates them for the unproductive character of their country. In the eastern Himalayas the Tomos of the Chumbi Valley are intermediaries of trade between Darjeeling and Tibet, In the western Himalayas, the Kumaon borderland of northern India, which commands some of the best passes, has made its native folk or Bhutias bold merchants who jealously monopolize the trade over the passes to the Tibetan markets. They stretch for a zone of thirty miles south of the boundary from Nepal to Garhwal along the approach to every pass, each sub-group having its particular trade route.[1245]
Transit duties.
It is always possible for such pass tribes to levy a toll or transit duty on merchandise, or in lieu of this to rob. Cæsar made war upon the Veragri and Seduni, who commanded the northern end of the Great St. Bernard Pass, in order to open up the road over the Alps, which was traversed by Roman merchants magno cum periculo magnisque cum portoriis.[1246] The Salassi, who inhabited the upper Dora Baltea Valley and hence controlled the Little St. Bernard wagon road leading over to Lugdunum or Lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted to cross their mountains. On one occasion they levied a toll of a drachm per man on a Roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of Cæsar himself. After a protracted struggle they were crushed by Augustus, who founded Aosta and garrisoned it with a body of Praetorian cohorts to police the highway.[1247] The Iapodes in the Julian Alps controlled the Mount Ocra or Peartree Pass, which carried the Roman wagon road from Aquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the Laibach and the Save. This strategic position they exploited to the utmost, till Augustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to Roman expansion on the Danube.[1248]
Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribes commanding the passes of the Suleiman Mountains have long been accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between Turkestan and India. The merchants have regularly organized themselves into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant exactions. The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls in the Khaibar and Kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every Indian dynasty for centuries. In 1881 the British government came to terms with them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.[1249] Just to the south the Gomal Pass, which carries the main traffic road over the border mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, is held by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be run by every armed caravan passing to and from India.[1250] The Ossetes of the Caucasus, who occupy the Pass of Dariel and the approaching valleys, regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia, till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road.[1251]
Strategic power of pass states.