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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278
shot up into the sky; to the north the Kuen Luen mountains walled the horizon; while eastwards stretched a barren desert, bounded by hills the ridges of which were fantastically shaped into domes, towers, and minarets.» I
The peaks of the Kara-korum shot up into the sky. And still one of the members of the expedition, ROBERT SHAW, denied the existence of the Kara-korum! After another 25 miles to the north they reached Lak Zung, and again found fossiliferous limestone with Encrinites and HiNurites. He has a diagram showing a section of one of the hills in the neighbourhood: at the bottom, Lower limestone, on which there is Red Sandstone and at the top, Upper limestone with talus.
Fifteen miles to Tarl Dat (Taldat). The view from here was »exceedingly grand. The Kuen Luen range, tipped with snow, and the valleys filled with glaciers, extended like a wall across the northern horizon 3o to 4o miles distant» ; between them and the mountains was an open plain covered for miles by an ice-bed.
After some fifty miles more they reached the Kara-kash River, surrounded by rugged peaks of granite more than 20,000 feet high, slate and gneiss prevailed, but the higher peaks appeared to be composed of granite. Their height, where reaching the river, was at 15,60o feet. He remarks that the last part of its course above Khotan had not yet been explored.
The lower Kara-kash skirts the southern base of the Kwen-lun Range, the higher peaks of which rise to 24,000 feet. On the southern side of the valley there is another range, or series of ranges, of mountains less lofty and less regular than those on the north.
From San j u-davan he gives the following geological profile: the pass is in granite, then undulating hills of gneiss and mica schist, much contorted, then a vertical bed of limestone containing Riodocrinus, then »carboniferous» and finally hills of blown sand over horizontal strata of red and white sandstone. The carboniferous limestone seems, however, only to be conjectural. The Sanju-davan he regards as the top of the Kwen-lun.
After their visit to Eastern Turkestan, they left Yarkand on September 5th. Having crossed the Suget - davan (16,000 feet) they »could see the Karakoram mountains twenty miles to the south, forming a wall of rugged snow capped peaks across the horizon».
They followed the Kara-kash »to its source», through a desolate weird-looking valley. At Kush-maidan the narrative suddenly comes to an end. A good general map, reproduced here as Pl. LX, accompanies the work, but the Kara - korum mountains are not distinctly shown.2
FORSYTH'S FIRST AND SECOND MISSION.
I Tue Times, August 3 i st, 1871; Autobiography, p. 65.
2 Map to illustrate the Route taken by the Yarkand Expedition in 1870, with a Section along the Route showing the absolute heights.
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