THE KARAKORUM PLATEAU 79
gently rolling sort as that which has just been described, as is apparent from the illustrations. The character of the scenery remains the same for nearly a hundred miles to the north, to the border of the Kwen Lun range. There again the rivers begin to flow once more in steep-sided young gorges, and cut across the range itself in canyons of wonderful depth and grandeur. The mountains are sharply dissected into magnificent peaks and arêtes, but at some places, as is shown in the photographs, traces of what seems to be an older, gentler topography can be detected.
Apparently, during recent geological times, the whole Karakorum region and its borders, from India on the south to Turkestan on the north, stood at a much lower level than now. The mountains, instead of being like the present Himalayas, were low and mature, not unlike the Appalachians. Later, the whole region seems to have been uplifted in a single mass, much as a continent rises slowly above the sea. Some parts, such as the border ranges of Himalaya and Kwen Lun, may have been raised more than others, forming broad, gentle arches, or elongated domes, measured in units of scores of miles. In such places the grade of the rivers must have been steepened. Hence the border ranges are much more dissected and furnish much' finer scenery than the central regions. There seems to be little or nothing to indicate that individual ranges or peaks owe their form primarily to local movements of the earth's crust. The whole appearance of the country, and the uniformity of the types of mountain and valley on the two sides of the main plateau, seem to indicate that there has been a
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