WHERE ALL OUR KNOWLEDGE CEASES. 53
Finally he remarks that beyond the »great Kylas or Laochi chain, washed in its northward base by the Indus), all our knowledge ceases. But from information and conclusions he is pretty sure of the existence of »still loftier ranges, the nature and limits of which we cannot even conjecture». He also concludes that on these northern ranges the eternal snow must be repelled to incredible height as the precipitation must be minimal from skies almost bare of clouds, a supposition in which he is right only to a certain extent.
I In a letter dated Sabatini January 21, 1829, Dr Gerard makes the following short reference to the Manasarovar : »Lake Mansarowur has always been considered by Eastern geographers as the central source of the great rivers of India, Brahmapootra, Gogra, Satlej, and Indus, and the highest table-level there, because the waters are thrown off in every direction from that point; but our over-scrupulous exactitude, in literally deriving those rivers from the same lake because the Hindoos had assigned a common origin to them, has led us to tax their ancient traditions with vagueness, incorrectness, and falsehood. Mansarowur being the reputed or even veritable source of these rivers, was a mere figurative position : it was also celebrated on account of Kylas, the throne of Mahadeo, which spires up from that lofty base in the form of a cone, sheeted in snow, and is, without a doubt, the highest point of the earth's surface. The Hindoos knew as well as we did, that two rivers in so rugged a country could not flow out of the same lake in opposite directions, but there is no question about the proximate conjunction of the whole four. We have yet to learn the Tibetan accounts, and as they promise to be free of much of the theological tincture of the Hindoos, we have still before us an unexplored field of interesting prospects.» THEODORE DUKA : »Life and Works of Alexander Csoma de Körös», London 1885, p. 91.
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