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202

THE TSO•MORARI COMPARED WITH THE MANASAROVAR.

Changrezhing: one, named Zungcham, is derived from a double source, that from the snow in Bootpoo range to the N.E. retaining the name common to both, and the Paratee issuing from Lake Chumorereel, a beautiful sheet of clear water eight or

ten miles long, and half that in breadth   I

Sir ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAM found no outlet from the lake at present; )the waters are consequently brackish, although not very perceptibly so to the taste. But the time has perhaps once been, when the Tshomoriri lake was a noble sheet of fresh water, about 3o miles in length ...» In September 1846 VANS AGNEW and Cunningham estimated the ridge that separates the lake from the Pårå river at 700 feet at least, probably 900. Now the rise and fall must not even amount to one foot. The lake had once, as he believes, an exit into the Sum-gal »and its accumulated waters were suddenly drained off by the disruption of the Sum-gal barrier>-.2

HENRY STRACHEY says that the Tso Moriri has no effluence. An elevation of I0o feet at its northern end, with an equal depression at the southern, would, however, send it all into the Rupshu river, along with the river from Pirse, through Leptra to Nurbu-Sumdo. »The old idea that the lake actually formed the source of the river, obtained by Herbert and others from distant inquiries, and still figuring on most English maps, though not strictly correct, is thus founded on geographical facts, and a careless observer might mistake the southern branch of the Pirse river for an effluent of the lake.» Strachey saw no signs of desiccation in the lake, nor was the existing watershed across the Leptra valley consistent with any considerable height of water above the then existing surface.3

Some ten years after Strachey, HERMANN VON SCHLAGINTWEI'l' visited the »Mountain-Lake», Tso-morari, in Rupshu, and camped at the southern end of the lake, which he makes 12 miles long and 3 miles broad, the absolute altitude being 15,13o feet.4 From his camp he could easily see the parallel beach-lines. The surface of the lake stood, in June, 3 2 feet below the threshold over which its effluent once passed. Already before the lake began to become salt, it had been shrinking and sinking on account of the erosion of its effluent. He regards the water as still drinkable.

The best description is, however, given by FREDERIC DREW, 5 who makes the lake 15 miles by 3-5 and at a height of 14,900. The water is slightly brackish and freezes in winter, and there is no outlet. The depth he found to amount to 248 feet in the southern, and 18o in the northern part of the lake; thus the Tso-morari is an ordinary valley dammed by the alluvial fan of a side stream, for the thickness to which such fans were known to accumulate would account for all the depths

I Narrative of a Journey, etc. Vol. II, p. 179.

2 Ladak, p. 139 and 194.

3 journal Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XXIII, 1853, p. 51.

4 Reisen in Indien und Hochasien, Bd III, p. 142 et seq.

5 The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories, London 1875, p. 301 et seq.