IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.7 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
l
TROTTER AND SAUNDERS.
317
The northern crest, which under the names of Kuen-Luen, Karakoram, and Mûzß tdgh, runs into Pamir, is prolonged to the west above Badakhshån, and forms the watershed 4. between the Oxus and the Cabul river, continues under the names of Koh-i-Båbå, Hindûkûsh, &c, to the north of Cabul, and finally traversing Khorasså.n at a much diminished altitude, reappears in the Elburz, to the south of the Caspian.
A very good map by ARROWSMITH accompanies the work. Here the Karakorum, the Murtagh, the Hindu - kush, the Kuh - i -Baba and the Siah - kuh form one long range.
Captain H. TROTTER, in 1877, gave the following description of a more
easterly road across the Kara-korum and Kwen-lun.I
The road from Noh skirts the Pangong Lake, which at Noh is joined by a stream
from the north-east, up which goes a good road to Khotan , via Polu and Kiria. — The distance to Khotan by this road is about 450 miles. For a distance of 40 miles from Noh it gradually rises to a height of 15,000 feet, and then for about i 6o miles as the crow flies, crosses, in a north-easterly direction, a series of elevated plains and ridges, before it descends somewhat suddenly to the plains of Eastern Turkistân. The average height above the sea-level of the halting-places on the elevated plain to the north of Noh is i 6,5oo feet. This vast highly-elevated plateau over which the road passes is the eastern continuation of the Ling-zi-Thang and Aksai Chin plains, which lie at a similar , or in places even higher, elevation in a north-westerly direction from Noh, between the Changchenmo River and the Kuen Luen Range, and have to be crossed by the traveller who
1 adopts the Eastern (or Chang-chenmo) route between Leh and Yarkand.
It has been said above (Vol. III, p. 184) that TR. SAUNDERS regarded the Kara-korum as a »range».
His own words are: The upper valleys of the Sanpu, the Satlej, and the Indus appear to form a huge elevated trough separating the Himalaya from the northern part of the table-land of Tibet, and from the snowy range into which that table-land contracts at its western end. This range is crossed by traders in its narrowest parts, through the Mustagh pass, and also through the Karakorum pass.
He regards the Tibetan plateau as extending from the Upper Indus and Tsangpo on the south to the plains of Gobi on the north. The »Southern Chain» which in reality is the same as my Transhimalaya, he called Gangri or Gang-disri, so far as it separates the Tsangpo and Indus basins from the elevated lake basin of the Tibetan plateau. And he is partly right in his theoretical conclusion that the »Karakorum Range» is a continuation of the Gangri-Mountains. ln opposition to SHAW he proves that the Kara-korum is a range on account of its height, its length exceeding 30o miles, and its function as a water-parting.
Regarding the Kwen-lun Mountains, they are believed to extend continuously between the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert. At the western extremity of the plateau they were known to do so and to continue as far east as 81° 30'. The
~
~
I journal Roy. Geogr. Society. Vol. 47, 1877, p. 9o. He refers the reader to Route XIV of Section G. of Geographical Appendix to the Report on the Survey operations in connection with the
mission to Yarkand in 1873, 74.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.