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
A RECAPITULATION.
209
water-parting and the Kara-korum Pass identified with the »Tsung-ling (chin. Blaues Geb.) Muz-Tagh (tü rk. Eis Geb. )». The Great Kara - korum with the glaciers is practically missing on this map.'
Recapitulating the different views set forth in this chapter, we have seen that HOOKER regards the Kara-korum or Kwen-lun as the great continental water-parting, a view that in later years was proved to be correct. Further, he believes that the Mus-tagh or Kara-korum extends due east into China south of the Hwang-ho. This theory is very interesting, and could be created only by a man of Hooker's perspicacity and intelligence. Ordinary explorers never see so far. In the history of exploration in the Kara-korum one very rarely meets the statement that the Karakorum continues through the whole of the Tibetan plateau-land. Hooker even goes too far, for already before reaching so far as to the region south of the sources of the Hwang-ho, the northern Kara-korum System, or Tang-la, has turned to the S. E. and south in its magnificent bend parallel to the Indo-Chinese rivers. However, according to Hooker, though he does not say it, the eastern continuation of the Kara-korum-Mus-tagh, 1. e. the Tang-la, has been crossed by Huc and GABET. Following HUMBOLDT as a leader he reckons the Kara-korum to the Kwen-lun System.
RICHARD STRACHEY looks upon Tibet as a great mountain mass, or protuberance, the Himalaya and Kwen-lun being integrating parts of it, a view that of course may be said to have something in its favour. But hereby we should not forget that Richard Strachey in speaking of the Kwen-lun means the Kara-korum, and the latter, as soon became known, does not terminate the protuberance to the north. The system we are used to calling Kwen-lun still remained to be discovered.
In HENRY STRACHEY'S opinion a table-land extended north of the Himalaya, slowly falling to the N. E. and gradually emerging into the deserts of Eastern Turkestan. To the N. W. the Bulut-tagh was a natural boundary to the Tibetan table-land. The great ranges he regarded as situated on the table-land, crossing it fairly parallel with one another, and in a very oblique direction. To him the Kara-korum and Kwen-lun were one and the same system, and as the Kara-korum was not known to continue very far east or S. E., it is easy to understand his idea about the slowly falling plateau-land to the N. E. He was the first to explore the middle course of the Chang-chenmo.
AHMED SHAH speaks of the Kurra Koorum Mountains, not only of the pass. But saying it is a small mountain, he probably only means the relatively low crest north of Yapchan, in which the saddle of the pass is sunk. He does not mention the mountains we call Kwen-lun.
i Pl. L. The title of the map is Karte der Britischen Besitzungen in Ost-Indien . . . aus Heinrich Kiepert's Neuem Handatlas No. 29, r : 8 000 000. Berlin 1857. 27. VII.
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