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
260
distinguished from the general system, in any sense in which each of the others could not equally be distinguished from the rest. Looked at individually, they are ranges distinct from one another, but viewed en masse, they all (including the Kuen-Lun) form but one
system or chain.
I have shown above I that Mirza Haidar's orography, which is the object of
Shaw's article, very well coincides with the Chinese conception of the Ts'ung-ling. And it may well be regarded as a merit both of the Chinese and of Mirza Haidar that they have a clear sense for generalisation in the orography. But their views are neither so high, nor so finely developed as those of European geographers, and it seems surprising that such a clever and intelligent man as Shaw could take the Oriental standpoint, though he has seen the whole country with his own eyes. It also sounds unexpected that he should call the Kwen-lun, one of the mightiest mountain-systems on the earth, a »subordinate ridge». But to a certain extent he may be said to be right when he joins the whole lot of ranges and systems and combines them into one grand system. His meaning is the same as if he should say: there is only one ocean on the earth, but, of course, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean are distinct from one another.
He is less lucky in the comparison he makes between the Sarik-kol Ranges
and the Mus-tagh Mountains:
I think we should consider the mountains on the east of the Pâmir plateau, not as a range lying roughly north and south, and cut through by the rivers (as is the case with the continuation of the Mustak Range south of Karakoram), but rather as a series of more or less parallel ridges, whose direction is roughly east and west , and between which the eastward drainage of the Pâmir plateau escapes.
Shaw thinks the »so-called Karakoram Range» has no »locus standi».
It has before been shown that further east, the water-parting represented by that z name on the maps is not even a ridge, but that many of the streams running into the Indus on one side, and into the Turkistân rivers on the other, originate close together on open (though elevated) plains. But now it would seem that even directly west of the Karakoram Pass we may ride across on a level from sources that feed the Indus into others which join the Yarkand River. The little ridge of Karakoram, therefore, is cut off on both sides, and has no physical connection with the mighty Murtak Range and its peaks of 28,000 feet of elevation, on which it has wrongly imposed its name in European maps, though never in the minds or speech of the natives.
The identification of the Mustagh Range with the Kara-korum Range is erroneous, / according to Shaw, for a road leading from Baltistan across a high glacier pass of
the Mustagh Range, on the other side is still south of the Kara-korum.
The truth is, that while the Murtak Range coincides with the water-parting between the Indus and Yârkand rivers as far east as the seventy-seventh degree of longitude (about), from that point eastward the range and the water-parting are divorced; the former continued its previous direction with its mighty snow-peaks and glaciers , running across the
ROBERT SHAW.
I P. 15, supra.
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