IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 |
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Citation Information
DESCENDING FROM THE HIGH PLATEAU. 257
Tibet from the peripheral regions of the Tsangpo and the Indus, which drain to the ocean. The latitudinal valleys are choked with detritus; their floors are in general level, but all the same they are broken up each into a series of self-contained drainage-basins, the greater number of which are at the present time dry, though formerly they contained lakes. Only in a few of them are there fragmentary relics of a lake still remaining. This holds good however only of the particular zone of Western Tibet that I traversed. In the next zone to the north the circumstances are different, as appears from Deasy's journey. In the belt of country that he travelled through he found an abundance of lakes; though towards the south of the region that he explored he found also a great number of dried up lake depressions, that is to say in that part of it which approaches nearest to the region that I explored. I propose to return to this interesting phenomenon in another connection. The orographical arrangement thus outlined, which occurs indeed with unalterable persistency throughout the whole of Tibet, renders a journey such as that which I took not only very monotonous but also less fruitful in geological results. But, as I have already said, the condition of my caravan macle it necessary for me to reach Ladak by the shortest possible route.
The part of the southern range which overhung Camp CXXXIII rises in somewhat majestic masses of rock, slashed with deep, narrow ravines and transverse glens, short and steep, and its crest was capped with snow. In one of these glens we discovered a frozen spring. The grazing was better than it had been for a long time, a good deal scattered it is true, but still sufficient. Some hard, dry thorny scrub yielded fuel. Thus we were fairly well situated. So far as we were able to judge from the distance, the strata in the northern range appeared to dip towards the north, and those of the southern range towards the south. Hence it was an anticlinal valley we were in.
On the 23rd November we made a short march towards the west, but it was so far forth interesting in that I now secured unambiguous evidence of the fact that the last lake depression did once possess an emissary towards the west, as indeed I had suspected from the presence of freshwater molluscs in its basin. The weather was moreover favourable, the wind of little account, the sky clouded over in the morning, but afterwards bright.
We kept along the base of the southern mountains, which still retained their rugged features, and the transverse glens still continued to terminate in triangular gravelly screes. Through a gap in the northern range we perceived to the N. 3o° E. an immense, flat, dome-shaped snowy mass. As we proceeded the terraced shearing along the foot of the southern range became more and more emphatic. It was the former bank of the lake's emissary; but there is no terrace on its right, that is to the north. The slope there is perfectly level, as may be seen from the profile
Nedin, •7ournep in Central Asia. !V. 33
4
Fig. 153.
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