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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ROBERT SHAW.
252
to the advantage of systematic geography to consider as one range the whole extent of so vast a mass. It was far more convenient that the great range of the north should have its distinct designation, as well as the great range on the south. He had no doubt that the range on the north was as well defined on its interior base as the Himalayas. It was, therefore, correct to say that this vast mass was bounded by a great range on the south, a great range on the east, and a great range on the north.
The Kara-korum is not mentioned in this orography of Saunders. Instead of
it he has the phantastic eastern range, which we already know,' and which he here makes equivalent to the Himalaya and Kwen-lun.
To this criticism SHAW answered: his reason for regarding the Kwen-lun and the Himalaya as belonging to one single system was, that the elevated belt of country over which he had travelled consisted of no fewer than eleven ridges, more or less parallel, separated by depressions, and he could not see why the last of those parallel ranges should be considered a distinct system any more than any of the other ranges.
This again should be compared with the results of the SCHLAGINTWEITS. It is true that one is lost in an uninterrupted world of mountains when travelling from Kashmir to Yarkand, and that the mountains only farther east separate from each other, forming more and more distinctly individual systems. But many years before 187o, the Kara-korum had been recognized as one separate system.
One year later we find how Col. WALKER thought:
Mr. Shaw was quite right in saying that the Kara-korum range was no range at all. At certain points its watershed is very low and very easily crossed. He believed that a counterpart to this would be found in what is called the Hindoo Koosh range, and he felt assured that there is no well-defined range where the Hindoo Koosh is represented to be.2
SHAW had, in a letter to MURCHISON, regarded as a »most interesting discovery» that there was no real range Kara-korum east of the Kara-korum Pass. To the west of the pass he talks of it as the Mustak Range. The natives know only a pass, not a range Kara-korum. »There is no continuous ridge dividing the waters of Southern and Central Asia.» The watershed describes the most irregular line in all points of the compass.
»Farther east again to the north of Chang - Chenmo and Rudok, a distinct ridge seems to divide the waters.» It runs N. W.—S. E., and is pierced through by the Shayok and its feeders near 35° North. lat., the Shayok in the gorge which was choked up by the Koomdân Glacier. This range he regards as the true continuation of the Mustak Range.
We shall have to return to Shaw's views presently, but first we may consider some other results of his journey.4
I Vide Vol. III, p. r 7 7 et seq. and Pl. XXI.
2 Proceedings R. G. S. Vol. XV. '87o-71, p. 203.
3 Ibidem, p. z 7 8.
4 Loc. cit., p. I 2 6.
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