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
SHAW AND SAUNDERS. 261
headwaters of the Shayok, which pierce it through narrow, often almost tunnel-like, gorges; while the latter (the water-parting) turns off to the north-east across the high Karakoram plateau , winding about among the hills which stud its surface, sometimes coinciding for a short distance with a ridge, and forming an imaginary line across the elevated plains.
He rightly does not believe in the possibility of constructing a railway across the Kara-korum, the scheme of which had been discussed at that time.
He quite agrees with SEVERTSOFF'S views as expressed in his paper in the 7. R. G. S. 1870. Shaw finds that the manner of transition of the Himalaya System into the Tian-shan System »is like that of a willow-wand which is bent almost double without breaking».
In Sir CLEMENTS MARKHAM'S geographical paper there took place, in 1877 and 1878, an interesting controversy between SHAW and SAUNDERS regarding the Kara-korum. I have already considered Saunders' article of 1877. In his answer to this, Shaw sharply maintains the difference between a range, which is a physical feature, and a water-parting which is only a function. He puts the question: »Is the water-parting between the Lob Basin, and the Indus Basin, throughout formed by a range of mountains or no?»
So far as the western part of the water-parting is concerned, Shaw agrees with Saunders who fixed it on the Mus-tagh Range. About its eastern continuation, from Nubra and eastwards, they disagree. In Shaw's opinion Saunders is wrong in making the Kara-korum the southern limit of the Tibetan plateau; for, going south from the sources of the East Turkestan rivers, you are still on the Tibetan plateau, and Saunders ignores the range which is broken through by the headwaters of the Shayok.
Shaw quotes Dr. SCULLY who noticed that he had crossed the mighty snow
range of Mus-tagh, and then, after arriving at the northern side of it, asks: »but where is the Kara-korum Range?» He finds some support in Dr. THOMSON'S description also. Saunders, on the other hand, is simply looking on the maps and,
joining the sources of the Turkestan rivers, calls such a line the Kara-korum. In opposition to Saunders, Shaw maintains that the Mus-tagh is a range in spite of several rivers breaking through it.
Shaw says that at the beginning of the Eastern Mus-tagh this range is divorced from the water-parting, which goes farther north and in which the Kara-korum Pass is situated. The mistake of Saunders is, he says, that he makes this water-parting a range and a continuation of the Western Mus-tagh. Saunders' three arguments for the Kara-korum Range being also a water-parting, are answered and refuted in a very clever way by Shaw in spite of the »limited vision of the observer on the spot», of which Saunders, strange enough, had been talking. In Shaw's opinion the
I Geographical Magazine. Vol. I V. 187 7, P. 314.
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