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
HENRY STRACHEY'S MONOGRAPH ON WESTERN TIBET.
2O5
Indian watershed is formed in this way. The Tibetan passes are crossing the low connecting links, whose alignment forms the main watershed but not the main mountain crest. From what he knows of the Turkish watershed, he supposes that the same formation exists there also.'
He regards the northern Indus as rising at once with a considerable body of water from the glaciers of Kumdan. As so many geographers of his time, he makes the Kumdan glaciers responsible for the great cataclysms of the Indus in 1835 and 1839.
Remembering the very scanty material existing in these days it is not surprising that Strachey could pay so little attention to the Kara-korum System. His own exploration was farther south, and when even the single Englishman who had reached the Kara-korum Pass reckoned it to the Kwen-lun, Strachey had no direct cause to believe in the existence of a third tremendous system between the Himalaya and the Kwen-lun. Regarding the glaciers of Western Tibet he expresses his opinion
in the following correct words:
The chief reservoirs of Tibetan glaciers seem to be in the S. face of the Turkish watershed, which the joint observations of English travellers and native reports prove to be full of them, and many of the first class both for size and formation. The main trunk of the Nubra River issues from two of these, at a place called Kumdan.
I myself found the river of Yarma-Nubra issuing fullformed (being 5o yards wide, with an extreme depth of 02- feet, and very rapid, in the beginning of October) from a large glacier, entirely occupying the head of the valley and (so far as Tibetan information goes) rendering it impassable.
The Tulumbuti affluent of the Yarma-Nubra River also rises from glaciers, which are passed on the summer road to Yarkend, upon the S. W. of the Saser La (as mentioned by Dr. Thomson). Mr. Vigne found several glaciers in the Shigar and Khapalu valleys, aligning with those of Kumdan and Yarma-Nubra; and the native travellers between Yarkend and Balti testify to a very large one upon the Turkish watershed, at the head of the Braldo branch of Shigar, which forms a serious obstacle to this route, and gives the pass its Turkish name of Mustag, i. e. Iceberg. Mr. J. E. Winterbottom and Lieut. R. Young found another still farther to the N. W., beyond the Tibetan frontier, in the northern head of Gilgit.2
Henry Strachey's article quoted above may certainly be said to be the best monograph ever written on the physical geography of Western Tibet until his time. It is full of detailed personal observation, and the material is arranged in the most consciencious way, and with the greatest clear-sightedness and penetration. The map accompanying his paper,3 and of which Pl. XLVIII is the northern half, is quite worthy of the erudite text. In accordance with the latter he has desisted from entering any
I Loc. cit., p. 23.
2 Loc. cit., p. 53.
3 Map of West 'est Nari, with the adjoining Provinces of the Indian Himalaya, to Illustrate Capt. H. Strachey's Memoir on the Physical Geography of Western Tibet.
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