Western Himalaya and Tibet

and Shayuk-Parkuta-Tolti-Kartash-Extensive lacustrine deposits-Tarkata-Road turns up the Dras river-Ulding Thung-Fall of snow-Hardas-Karbu-Continued snow-Dr

T OF ISKA

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d on the barren stony slopes behind. About five miles from Iskardo, a spur, from the mountain range on the south, which abuts in a scarped cliff upon the river, has been taken advantage of by the inhabitants to build a small gateway, through which the road is made to run. The extreme steepness of the mountain mass which lies to the south and east, makes it scarcely possible to approach Iskardo along the south bank of the river from these directions, without passing through this gateway, and, therefore, a small party of soldiers is kept on this rocky pass by the Sikh rulers of the country. A species of Daphne was very common on the rocky hills about this pass, apparently an evergreen, as it was in full leaf in the midst of the snow. From the higher parts of the road, and from the rocky

WORN

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m the fall of masses of rock from the cliffs above, but in more than one place so curiously arranged, at the apertures of lateral ravines, as to be, I think, almost certainly of glacial origin. Many of the large boulders which occurred in the alluvium were observed to be much waterworn, spherical cavities being worn out in them. Similar waterworn rocks were also seen in si

F LACUST

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ff, not less than 1000 or 1200 feet above the river. Several other patches came into sight soon after, all high up on the mountain-sides; one above the village of Golochu, and others at intervals all the way to the junction of the Indus and Shayuk. I cannot, therefore, doubt that the lake in which the clay beds of Kiris were deposited, was the same as that which occupied the Iskardo basin; nor does it seem easy to fix its exact boundaries. The great height of the patches of clay, in the narrow channel above Nar, show that the depth of the lake had been very considerable; and if we assume a depth of 1500 feet, which seems necessary, and at the same time admit the arrangement of the ancient rocks to have been the same as at present, we must either suppose some great bar

F INDUS WI

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it turns abruptly to the south, ascending the left bank of the Indus, which runs nearly due north in a narrow rocky ravine. A bluff projecting ridge of granite, sixty or eighty feet high, polished on the surface by aqueous action, and of a brilliantly brown-black colour, so that the nature of the rock is only discoverable by breaking it, here advances close to the river, and is crossed by a steep sinuous path, eked out by flights of steps

S VA

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ently to notice. For more than two miles, the ravine continues very narrow, and several steep spurs are crossed. It then becomes gradually a little wider, narrow platforms of conglomerate skirting the stream, and changes its direction from nearly due south to south-east. The right bank is stony and unproductive the whole way, but o

uent April journey seen at considerable elevations, but in December the slopes were covered with snow to within a thousand feet of the river. In several places the clay formed cliffs, which rose perpendicularly from the Indus, and could be seen to be covered with modern alluvium deposited during floods, just as the ancient rocks are in other places. The clay appeared everywhere extremely fine, without any intermixture of sa

RK

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e cause of its accumulation to such a height, just rises above the general surface of the platform. This is covered with a mass of buildings, formerly the residence of the Rajah of Parkuta, a branch of the same family who ruled at Iskardo, and dependent

LT

ber,

illage of Urdi, three or four miles from Parkuta, seemed very populous, and extended for a great distance along the river. It was remarkable for an aqueduct supported on pillars of stone, which crossed a ravine immediately above the village. At this spot the cultivation

RT

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ith considerable labour between the fields and the mountains. Tolti was the most gloomy village which I had yet seen, the precipitous mountains forming a circle all round it, and almost shutting out the light of day. The bird's-nest fort in the ravine behind the village, perched on the top of a rock (in a most untenable position, though probably well suited for defence against sudden attack), accorded well wi

left bank. On this side, the lower part of the valley is so steep as to be impracticable; and I found it necessary to ascend at once from Tolti on a stony ridge, almost directly away from the river. The ascent was long and fatiguing; the ridge being capped, in the same manner as that above Kunes on the Shayuk, with masses of alluvium. The ridge was more than 1500 feet above the river, and its upper part was covered with snow, through which the path lay for four or five miles, after which it descended very abruptly to the river,

S VA

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ance of this and other places may be less gloomy, and that, from having only seen this part of Tibet in the depth of winter, I may be disposed to regard it in too unfavourable a point of view. The abrupt and precipitous rise of the mountains on all sides must undoubtedly tend

ble hesitation, as I find with regret that I have not in my notes attended with sufficient care to the distinction between the two, not having at the time sufficiently adverted to their probably different origin. I am now disposed to think that in the narrow ravine above Tolti was situated the barrier which bounded on the east the lake

consisted of large masses of rock, split and fractured in every direction, often very precipitous, without a vestige of soil, and with scarcely the slightest traces of vegetation. Immense tracts, both along the river and on the slopes of the ravines descending from the mountains, were covered with boulders or with angular fragments of rock, strewed irregular

itive rock, but of a soft and almost incoherent sandstone, alternating irregularly and without any definite order with boulder conglomerate, and fine clay. These beds, which are very extensively developed on both sides of the river, around the village of Tarkata, for some distance in both directions, attain a thickness of at least six or seven

NDSTONE

ber,

ed than that is, and in being associated and alternating with the very fine clays resembling those which occupy the lower levels of the valley of Iskardo. The sandstones of Tarkata did not appear to be fossiliferous, nor did I, in the slight examination I was able to give them, discover any shells in the fine clays in this neighbourhood. The general s

TING

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s most laborious to make any progress. The mornings had been always frosty, but the temperature rose in the middle of the day several degrees above 32°. On the 8th of December, a sudden increase of cold seemed to take place, the temperature not rising above the freezing-point. Large cakes of ice, which appeared early on the morning of that day, flo

is quite inaccessible. In passing from the Indus into the valley of Dras, the road crosses the granitic spur which separates the two rivers, at an elevation of about 2000 feet above the Indus, ascending to this height very rapidly along a steep spur, which recedes almost in a perpendicular direction from that rive

Y OF

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ly to a level with my eye. Between the ridge on which I stood and the next in succession up the Dras valley, an open and shallow valley, everywhere strewed with enormous blocks of granite, sloped gently till it approached the brink of the almost perpendicu

small level plain surrounded by a number of giant boulders, resting on the upper edge of a very steep slope, and ev

s is not uncommon elsewhere) dug out by the inhabitants for the purpose of extracting its salt, which is obtained in a state of brine by simply washing the clay with water. The elevation o

n miles, to the village of Hardas, on the left bank of the Dras river; passing about two miles before the end of the march the river of Kargyl or Pashkyum, a very large stream which descends from the south-east. During the earlier part of this day, the road was extremely bad. It descended from Ulding abruptly to the level of the Dras river, to cross at its point of junction a large tributa

W S

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right bank during the remainder of the day. I could see that the valley was wider than the day before, but the incessant snow made the appearance of the country undistinguishable. The margins of the stream were occasionally fr

lt for the night. The snow-storm continued till about eight P.M., when the weather cleared, and the night was clear and starlight. Next morning, the weather continuing fine, I was able to proceed to Dras. The depth of snow had increased to about two feet; and

R

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unwelcome tidings, that my advance so far was fruitless, the pass in front being blocked up with snow. For this I was quite unprepared, having been led to believe that the road to Kashmir in this direction was always open, and no hint having been given me at Iskardo that my delay t

hat place, after attempting in the morning to advance towards the pass, which is ten miles further on, and being stopped by finding the snow ten and twelve feet deep, and quite soft. After the assurances of this

demands of my party for fuel were found very difficult to supply, even for a day, the faggots of brushwood, which alone are there available, being soon consumed, and, therefore, unwillingly parted with;

TOWARDS

ber,

, I found, rather to my surprise, a room, with a fire-place and chimney, allotted for my accommodation by the kindness of the commandant. In descending again towards the Indus, I took shelter in the villages, occupying, if possible, a cow-house in preference to one used by the inhabitants. The houses are generally built of waterworn stones, without cement, but plastered with mud outside and insi

WATER

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iver, I found that a very few days had made a great change in the temperature. The river was everywhere hard frozen, and all the little streams which ran down the mountain-sides were coated with a thick shell of ice. More than once I saw a waterfall with a covering, perhaps a yard i

river was now entirely frozen over, and so solid, that one of my servants, a native of India, losing his way in the snow-storm, instead of turning

here are a succession of rapids in the stream, which extend, without much intermission, considerably more than a mile, and must produce a very considerable change in the elevation of its bed. The river was nowhere frozen between Kartash and Tolti, the stream being too rapid to freeze

BRI

ber,

e road way of the bridge is suspended. These bridges are perfectly safe, though, from their open structure, rather formidable to those who are not accustomed to use them. The principle on which they are made is the same as one which is in use in all the hill provinces of India, from the Khasya mount

tached to the tree instead of falling at the end of autumn. Occasionally, no doubt, the occurrence of these trees was due to the former existence of villages in the vicinity of the places in which they were observed, but they also seemed sometimes to occur in places where no cultivation could ever have existed. Their occurrence, however, must, I t

AT IS

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during the whole of that period. The elevation of Iskardo above the level of the sea is about 7200 feet. Winter may be said to have commenced on the 28th of November, on which day the first snow fell. From that date, falls of snow recurred constantly at intervals, which varied from two or three days to a w

freezing-point. In the earlier part of the winter, the snow melted rapidly, and the ground in the open valley was generally nearly free of it before the next fall. After the beginning of January, however, the cold increased, and the

ring the whole winter was 19?°, and that at two P.M. 33?°. The mean temperature during the period from the 28th of December to the 31st of January was 27?°, and from the 1st to the 24th of

oon before the sun was able to dispel it. On the second or third day the sky would become hazy, the sun being partly obscured by a thin stratum of cloud at a great elevation. During the continuance of this haze, the temperature was always more elevated than when the sky was c

an once observed the phenomenon of small quantities of extremely fine-grained snow falling when the sky was quite clear, and the air at the surface of the earth quite motionless. During clear weather very

ut the noise of the snow in motion was heard like distant thunder, often many times a day, and the bare spots which it had left could be seen after the snow-storm had ceased. When the weather was settled, the wind was in general very gentle, and blew up

the neighbourhood of the town, and examined the cliffs of clay in every direction in search of fossils, without discovering (as I had some hopes of doing) any mammalian remains. The communication with Le was open all winter; I was therefore able to correspond with Captain Strachey, who, after examining the course of the Indus from the Chinese boundary downwards, was spending the winter there. By his assistance I succeeded

in other cases a change was made. At Iskardo, Mahommed Shah, the present Rajah, had been an exile in Kashmir, from being on bad terms with his father. He is a feeble and sickly young man, without the energy of his father, M. Vigne's host in Iskardo. The inhabitants of Balti, though Tibetan in l