IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.7 |
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Citation Information
STRAHLENBERG AND OTHERS.
,1
.;~
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78
mountains covered with eternal snow, for Kenkri is certainly the Tibetan Kangri, snow-mountain, and mouson, the Mongolian musun, ice. Near Frontiere d'Yerghien, or boundary of Yarkand, we find the mountains, Lapoutsi M. and Tchac M., which
I cannot make out. Finally there is a Kirian M., Keria or Kilian Mountains, as
suggested above.
D'ANVILLE'S map of 1733 may be said to be the first on which there is space enough left for the Kara-korum System. Though the system itself is missing, there is a road crossing it, and the map indicates by its Kenkri-mouson, that very high mountains are crossed by the road. The mountains entered at both sides of Routou, Rudok, are indeed parts of the Kara-korum System. And it may be said that this map is the first we know of, on which we find a rudimentary representation of one single crossing of this enormous system, great parts of which still at present remain unknown.
Already some i 8 years before d'Anville's famous map was published, a European, IPPOLITO DESIDERI, seems to have crossed a part of the southern Kara-korum System. He mentions Baltistan or Little Tibet, which indeed belongs to our system. On August i 7th, 1715 he left Leh and if it is correct as I have tried to show', that he travelled to Tashi-gang viâ Rudok — for he speaks of the wide waterless plain of Cianghthang — he has crossed a part of the Kara-korum Mountains. Of Tibet Proper or Butan, which in the language of the country was called Po, he says: »To the north it is bounded by hard and desolate places, being the way which leads to high independent Tartary and the kingdom of Yarkand.» And further: »The third Tibet is so vast, that one needs six months good and continuous journey between Gartok and Sining. Its breadth is very different in different places. The province of Zang-to, which is 21 months across, stretches far to the north to the wild rocks which are on the frontier of the kingdom of Yarkand, and to the impracticable mountains which form a wall to high independent Tartary or the country of the Dsungarians.» In the east he just only notes the existence of a road from Lhasa viâ Sining to China and the Lower Tartary.2
He thus not only touched a part of the Western Kara-korum on his journey, but also had knowledge of roads crossing the whole system, both in the west and in the east, though of the system itself he could, of course, not know anything. In an article : Notes sur le Tube/ par le P. Hij5olyte Desideri, recuellies par N. Delisle, the road from Yarkand to Ngari, crossing the Kara-korum, is also mentioned as follows: Pour aller de Yarkand au Tubet on passe par le désert de Ngari Jongar, auquel on arrive par un passage entre deux montagnes qui nulle autre part ne sont praticables. Le pays de Ngari Jongar dépend du Tubet.3
I Vide Vol. I, p. 272.
2 Vide Vol. III, p. 12.
3 Nouveau , journ. Asiat. Tome VIII. Paris 1831, p. I I9. This article was published by Klaproth.
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