A RECAPITULATION. 237
The paper referred to that part of the range which bounded the valley of the Indus upon the north, the Kara-Korum or Mooz-tagh or the »Icy Range of mountains», and the other
great series of them were the mountains which bounded the Indus upon the south.
Dr. Falconer related some glacial observations of other travellers and his own visit in 1838 to the Shigar valley and the valley of Bialdoh. Already 27 years ago he had been up to Arundu and thence he proceeded to the glacier of the Bialdoh River, »where he saw all the phenomena which had been described by Captain Godwin-Austen». The Shigar valley was bounded by mountains of great elevation. Some of them had been measured by Major MONTGOMERIE and one had been found to reach 28,000 feet. »This naturally entailed a prodigious amount of condensation of the moisture of the atmosphere, and led to a very heavy fall of snow, the result of which was seen in these glacial phenomena.»
Having proceeded so far in our history of exploration, we have found how slowly the knowledge of these mountainous labyrinths developed, and how they prove, after every new conquest, to be more and more complicated. The classic Imaus and Emodus, the Chinese Ts'ung-ling, the European Montes tebetici indicated only one simple mountain wall to the north of India. HUMBOLDT makes it double, the Himalaya and the Kwen-lun. FALCONER still maintains that in the opinion of the best observers there is only one great system of mountains, but he agrees that from certain points of view one can talk of two great ranges south and north of the Indus. The SCHLAGINTWEITS proved that there are three great systems, the Himalaya, Kara-korum and Kwen-lun, and even suspected that the Kara-korum is double. Thus the farther we proceed, the more authoptic observations that are added to our store of knowledge, — the clearer it becomes how little we really know and how the distance, which still separates us from a complete understanding, and map image of the orography, becomes more and more considerable. So late as in 1911 Dr. ARTHUR NEVE added a third Kara-korum Range to the former two. And even now we are very far from the goal. Before it can be reached the geology of all these different folds must be thoroughly known, and there is a work which will take generations of scientifically trained explorers.
It cannot be otherwise. The classics only know that India was bounded to the north by mountains. The Chinese, who are good topographers but poor orographers, joined the whole lot of mountains into one Ts'ung-ling System. GASTALDI separated India from MARCO POLO'S deserts of Lop and Camul by one narrow strip of mountains. Even HUMBOLDT had insufficient material at his disposal. Only when the mountains were crossed by such men as VIGNE, THOMSON, the SCHLAGINTWEITS, MONTGOMERIE, GODWIN-AUSTEN, and others, it became clear that the upheaval between India and Turkestan consisted of an extremely complicated variety of chains, ranges, ridges and valleys.
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