国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO TIIE SACRED LAKE.   29

They went up the Dauli to Malåri and Nftf where they had some difficulties

with the chief who suspected them to be either »Gorkhalfs or Firingfs» and wondered whether their arms and great number of men meant hostilities to Undés. But they informed him that they had come for pious and humane purposes to visit the lake of Månsarôwar.

Seeing the mighty mountains, Moorcroft remarks that such a surface of mountainous country in such a state, along with the vast declivity of the beds of the rivers, will afford a more satisfactory explanation of the real sources of the Ganges than by supposing it to come from a lake which must have some continual source of supply itself.

After a long delay (June 4-24) they left Niti and continued up the upper

Dauli, the sources of which they left to the west. On the right bank of the river they principally saw granite of a green colour. They passed the last birch, left the Dauli behind, and commenced ascending the Ghatf or pass which separates Hindustan from U'ndés, or Hundes. On the Niti Ghati they were glad not to find any resistance from Daba. The height of this pass was found to be so great, that a small body of resolute men might almost defend it against a large army, merely by rolling down stones. North of the pass was a river called Jandû.I The plain around was very broad and intersected by deep and broad ravines. As all of them ran to the north and east, they were considered to be the sources of those various streams, which, joining in their course, give rise to the Satlej.

Farther on, on the road to Daba, he could see to the east the sacred mountain

near the lake of Månsarôwar, tipped with snow, and called Cailås or Mahadeô ka Ling. The morphologic difference between the river-courses north and south of the main ridge of the Himalayas does not escape his attention, the northern ones being much broader and more open and sloping gradually. Speaking of the great plain he had now reached, he says that it is bounded on the south by the last Himalayan ridge, and on the north by the Cailås mountains with snow summits and easy slopes to the plain. Behind, the mountains seem to meet in an angle near Mahådéva ka Ling.

On July 3rd they reached Daba and left the place again on the i 2th, on

the way to Ghertope or Gartok, where the military chief wished to see them and their merchandise. This way took them to a plain sloping to the Satûdrå or Satlej. They crossed the river. Before reaching Gartok, the party carne to a river, which rises near Gongré, goes past Ghertope, then close to Latåk or Ladak, and was said likewise to proceed to Bokhara, where it was supposed to fall into the Ammoo, Djihon or Oxus. He did not remain very long in this error, for already in Gartok he wrote in his diary: »I must here remark that the river, which goes from Ghertope to Latåk, does not proceed to Bokhara as before

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= Pubindu on the map, P1. III.