DR J. G. GERARD'S OPINION OF LAKE `IANASAROVAR. 51
Gerard correctly supposes that Moorcroft exaggerates the dimensions of Rawun Rudd or Langa-cho in making it four times as big as Tso-mavang. The most accounts he got made the lake 6 clays in circumference and only one made it 7 days. He only met 6 or 8 persons who had gone round it. On account of its irregular shores he does not think it is much larger than the sacred lake. He criticises Moorcroft who doubted the existence of islands. At least 15 persons told him there was a small island, only 200 or 25o yards across. As a matter of fact Moor-croft says that the lake is »surrounding some large portions of rock a little detached from the Himachul,, though at another place he denies the existence of islands.
For Gartok he gives several names: Garoo, Gartop, Gur, Yoogar, Zhoogar and Gurtokh. Tsaparang or Chaprang he calls Chubrang and says it is a collection of tents, inhabited during the winter. Roodak is a town of 200 houses on the right bank of the Indus, half way between Leh and Gartok. It is famed for the salt and borax lakes in the vicinity. Chakchaka is one of them. Ladak is bounded on the north by Yarkund and its dependencies, on the east and S.E. by Chinese Tartary. By Tibet he obviously means only the country farther east, Tibet Proper. »IntraHimalayan regions» is an expression he is probably the first to use.
On Gerard's map, I Pl. IV., there is no communication whatever between the two lakes. The outlines of the lakes are somewhat changed from Moorcroft's representation, and in the centre of Langa Lake there is an island. The Satlej issues from the Langa Lake. The N.E. branch of the Indus is much greater than the Gartok branch.
Dr J. G. GERARD has written an article: Observations on the Spa/ Valley and circumjacent country within the Himalaya, which proves that its author was far ahead of his time. 2 It was published the same year as Ritter's second volume of his geography of Asia and gives a good general idea of the then current views of some parts north of the Himalayas. He says nothing is known or even conjectured about a northern and N.E. boundary of the great central platform of Asia. He regards Lake Månsarovara as the highest point of the Indian Peninsula, forming a plain which throws off the great rivers from S.E. to N.W., and the base of clusters of peaks insulated between their sources and the northern slope of the plateau, of which all knowledge was still confined to conclusions from the upper course of the Satlej and Indus, where the basins of those rivers, and consequently the lowest depression of the soil, had been ascertained to rest upon the zone of 15,000 feet, and the table land, through which they flow, to rise beyond 17,000. )There are but approximations to the altitude of the broken plains of Tartary, which only serve
I Vide: Narrative of a Journey etc. by Sir W. Lloyd and Captain Alexander Gerard's account of an attempt to penetrate by Bekhur to Garoo, and the lake Manasarowara._ Vol. II. London 184o.
2 Asiat. Researches, Part II, Vol. XVIII, Calcutta 1833, h. 238 et seq.
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