IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.7 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
3 64 BOGDANOVITCH, MEDLICOTT, BLANFORD, OLDHAM AND LOCZY.
of the Kwen-lun are not clearly distinguished orographically from the mountains of Pamir ; he says that they melt together with the ranges Mustagh and Kara-korum. The latter he calls ranges instead of systems. The British geological surveys in the Kara-korum together with his own investigations in the Western Kwen-lun convince him that, probably in the tertiary epoch, the north-western formation of folds has elevated the wide zone situated in front of the Kashgarian mountains and 'Western Kwen-lun (the basin of Tisnaf) ; in connection herewith the Kara-korum and Mus-tagh have been raised. Thus in the west he finds that the Kara-korum and Mustagh have taken part in the movements of the Kwen-lun, whilst in the east the gigantic upheaval of the regions between Tsaidam and Lhasa have taken place. At the same time the central Kwen-lun maintained a more independent position. All the folds of N. W. Tibet have thus become curved from a N. W. to a W. E. direction.
In the first chapters of his more elaborate work which forms Vol. II of the narrative of PIEVTSOFF'S expedition, he returns to the same orographical problems. Many years have passed since he published his work which is, therefore, antiquated in several points at the present day. But this fact does not in the least diminish its great value as a document of our knowledge of these parts of the world in the first years of the decade beginning in 1890.1
He shows how the mountain ranges of Northern Tibet turning to the N. W. form the complicated upheaval of the Kwen-lun and Kara-korum. The region of lakes stretching from Panggong to Tengri-nor forms, so to say, a terrace from the highlands of Katchi , south of which the mountain block of Tibet is bounded by the entangled uplifts which to the south terminate in _ the Himalaya. The heights of N. W. Tibet, so far as they were explored by PIEVTSOFF'S expedition, and situated between the upper reaches of the rivers Keriya-darya and Cherchen-darya, represent a highland desert covered with detritus and gravel. Sharp ridges of insignificant relative altitude (from some ten to a thousand and more feet), half covered with the products of their own destruction represent the principal element in the relief of this country. From the ground in the valleys or intervening spaces between these ridges the heads of sharpedged layers of old Tibetan strata crop up, as sandstone, conglomerate and breccia. These dry, barren and stony valleys and ridges together with the enormous absolute height make this land one of the most inaccessible regions on the earth's crust.
The extraordinary analogy between the northern and the southern parts of N. W.
Tibet at once strikes our eyes. There, in the south as here along this unknown country — we find a series of insignificant basins without outlet. Both in the north and the south
I 7pydvz 1 u6emcacoû 3xcneduz(iu 188y-1Syo u. Ilodb HaitaAbc11180.41v M. B. II1b82408a. LIdcniti II•
1 eonozuneciciR usc.mdoeaniA 8a Bocmouuo.iiz Typirecmaxm. K. H. bozdaleoeusra. C.-I1eTep6ypro 1892/ p. 42 et se 1.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.