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
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190 CSOMA, ZIMMERMANN, HELMERSEN, AND OTHERS.
the Pamir, for he says: Westlich von dem Querjoch Belur liegt die Station Pamir, fast im Parallel von Kaschgar, also ungefähr in 391° Breite; nach dieser hat Marco Polo eine Hochebene genannt , aus welcher neuere Geographen südlicher bald eine Gebirgskette, bald eine eigene Provinz machen.'
The same author believes that the Ping-shan of Chinese geographers is identical with Bolor, though their Icy Mountains are the Kara-korum so far as this system was known to them. In this connection he quotes a passage from the Asiatic journal 1828, p. 397. »The Chinese geographers say, that although beyond Yarkand, across the Imaus Mountains (called by them also Ping-shan, `icy mountains') the road is very craggy and difficult; still there is between Ye-urh-keang and Wan-too-sze-tan (Yarchand and Hindoostan) a going and coming highway, or great road, and in its neighbourhood there are a great many gemproducing mountains." And Zimmermann adds: Es bildet sich in dieser Gegend Inner-Asiens also ein Gebirgsland aus gitterförmig sich durchsetzenden Eisketten gebaut, welches der Indus in der IscardoLandschaft Randoh schon durchbrochen hat.
The question whether the Hindu-kush be the continuation of the Himalaya
or the Kwen-lun, has also been touched upon by ZIMMERMANN who criticises the English view that the Hindu-kush is the prolongation of the Himalaya. Both the stretching and geological structure are different, he says. ALEX. VON HUMBOLDT had proved it to be the continuation of the Kwen-lun, a view that had been confirmed by GERARD. The latter only indirectly mentions the Kara-korum. Zimmermann has
the following quotation,2 where the Kara-korum regions are dealt with:
As the routes to Yarkund are free of snow at this season of the year, they may not be so elevated as they appear. When in the open plains of Turkestan, the thought (which had often amused us) occurred, — is the Hindu Kush the true limit of the great snowy chain that forms the northern frontier of British India? In seeking for the continuity of the Himalaya, we must go north of Ladak and the sources of the Oxus, where a vast tract of lofty summits will be found to tend towards the shirts of Yarkund and somewhere near the heads of the Oxus and Jaxartes, to define the scope of the country to the northwest; this will bring the high plateaux, north of the Indus , within more precise limits. All this tract, which is by no means very remote, is still unseen by the eye of civilized man.
From GERARD'S and HÜGEL'S Journals he draws the conclusion that Tibet is no continuous plateau-land, and that the plateau itself stretches far more to the
north than was hitherto supposed. He disproves, however, the term »Tafelland» for northern Tibet.
It is the more surprising that Zimmermann in his text makes no attempt to give to the Kara-korum its due place, as this system plays no unimportant part on
I Der Kriegsschauplatz in Inner-Asien oder Bemerkungen zu der Uebersichtskarte von Afghanistan,
dem Penjab und dem Lande am untern Indus. Nach englischen Quellen herausgegeben von Carl Zimmermann. Berlin 1842, p. 104 et seq.
Asiatic journal, September-December 1833, p. 115.
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