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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111
CHAPTER XXIV.
HOOKER, STRACHEY, MONTGOMERIE, AND OTHERS.
Sir JOSEPH HOOKER had no opportunity to visit the Kara-korum himself, but in his remarkable narrative he sometimes compares his own observations with those of Dr. THOMSON. About the limestone hills east of Cholamoo Lake in Sikkim he says:1 »This, from its mineral characters, appears to be the same limestone formation which occurs throughout the Himalaya and Western Tibet.» And regarding the snowline2 he fixes, from 95° E. to 75° E., Assam and Kashmir, the lowest limit of perpetual snow at 15,500 or I 6,000 feet. The climate becomes drier to the north, the snow-line rises, the vegetation diminishes. »To mention extreme cases; the snow-level of Sikkim 2 7° 30' is at I 6,000 feet, whereas in latitude 35° 3d Dr. Thomson found the snow-line 2 0,000 feet on the mountains near the Kara-korum Pass, and vegetation up to 18,500 feet — features I found to be common also to Sikkim in latitude 28°.»
We remember from another part of this work3 Hooker's general orography and how the third of his four chains, originating in the mountains near Manasarovar, was »the Kouenlun or Kara-korum chain, dividing the Indus from the Yarkand river».4 When Hooker says that all the waters which flow to the north from his Kara-korum and its eastern continuation, go to lake Lop, he is obviously influenced by Dr. Thomson. But Hooker also, like Thomson, regards the Pamir or » Bolor» as the centre from which the three greatest mountain systems of Asia originate, and of the third of them he says: »The Murthagh or Karakorum, which probably extends due east into China, south of the Hoang-ho, but which is broken up north of Manasarovar into the chains which have been already enumerated.» Hooker sometimes has Karakorum or Kouenlun, sometimes Karakorum or Murtagh, but in both cases he means the system in which the Karakorum and Murtagh passes are situated.
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~ IIi»rczlayan Journals, etc. London r S54. Vol. II, p. 177. 2 Op. cit., p. 396.
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Vide Vol. III, p. 113 et seq.
4 Op. cit., p. 400.
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