The Panja in its passage through the Wakhan valley presents a number of interesting contrasts. In its higher reaches at first a tumbling mountain torrent, it becomes between Semut which is below Langar Kisht and Shirtar, a slow, lifeless stream, so nerveless and placid that it ceases to carry in its current the masses of suspended matter which hitherto have been swept along with it. At Langar Kisht, the junction of the Pamir Daria with the Panja, there is a deposit of broken rocks and smooth water-borne stones which have been brought down from the glaciers. The wide area, covered by these quantities of _débris_ and detritus from the upper valleys, makes the banks and bed of the river resemble a deserted beach, where human life seldom enters and vegetation does not flourish. In places where deposits of sand have been left by the stream, the wind has whipped the loose surfaces into small dunes; in other directions large tracts of this drift sand have been covered by tamarisk; elsewhere there is no vegetation and the tamarisk has not appeared. In mid-summer, when the river diminishes and high winds blow through the gorge, the scattered patches of sand left by the stream are caught up by the gales and swept in clouds of fine dust across the fields beyond. [Illustration: BESIDE THE OXUS _Photo, Olufsen_] [Illustration: THE WAKHAN VALLEY _Photo, Olufsen_] In the wider valleys, such as those at Langar Kisht and the Zung, the Panja divides into a number of arms. These small channels contain dangerous quicksands. The stream itself is black with mud, the river at this point being charged with a fertilising matter which, where deposited, is followed usually by a growth of luxuriant vegetation. The Pamir Daria similarly breaks up, but its channels are free from quicksand and the water carries little mud in suspension.[8] Between Langar Kisht and Ptuk there is a belt of vegetation. The banks are covered with grass; there are many willows, white poplars, and here and there impenetrable copses of camelthorn. Beyond Ptuk, the beneficent character of the river changes and in the valley between Semut and Shirtar the banks reflect a waste of sand dunes and patches of drift sand. The mud deposits of the main stream, too, appear to be exhausted at Ptuk, where there is a large intake of glacial water from a number of rapid streams which come down from the Hindu Kush. As if the moraines discharged their stones and gravel into these snow-fed torrents there exists at this point a stretch of river-bed, desolate and barren. [Illustration: TYPE FROM WAKHAN _Photo, Olufsen_]