National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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3k.41,02,4j4,4ANi

(.286 )

. of the tail ends of a series of longitudinal chains. It is broken through nearly at right angles by the Yamunyar river, which brings down the drainage of the Little Karakul Lake and the contiguous portion of the Kizil-art plain, just as the Kuen Luen and many of the Himalayan ranges are broken through by rivers whose sources are in the upper table-lands.

The positions of several peaks of the Kizil-art range were fixed by numerous bearings, taken from points along the road between Yf rkand and Kâshghar, and the four most conspicuous ones, embracing a length of 52 miles were found to lie almost exactly in one straight line having a direction of about 30° west of the true meridian. The most southerly anal the highest of these, the Tagharma peak * of Hayward I ascertained trigonometrically to be 25,350 feet above sea level, while two others are at least 22,500 feet high.

From the Tagharma peak southwards the range diminishes very much in height. On our return journey we crossed the (ihichiklik mountains (which may be considered as a continuation of the same range) at the Kok-Mainâk Pass at an elevation of 15,670 feet; whilst further south the same mountains are pierced by the Tashkurghan river at a height of about 10,000 feet. Little is known of the range further south, but it would seem to be a connecting link with the iiimalayikaii ranges so that the old Chinese geographers, who did indeed link together the " Bolor" and the " Karakorum" under the common name of " Tsung

Ling" or " Onion mountains" were not far wrong in their ideas.

I am inclined to agree with Mr. Fedchenko in considering the Pamir steppes, within the limits by which I have defined them, to be a portion of the Thien Shen. At all events they present a very similar physical formation, the main feature of which is the existence of ranges situated on a high table-land, and running more or less east and west. We have already seen that in the only portion of the Thien Shin system visited by us, i.e., to the north and northeast of Kashghar, the mountains consist entirely of parallel ranges having an easterly and westerly direction, and that the elevated plain on which they are situated rises rapidly higher and higher as it advances northwards. It is not always easy to detect the parallelism of these ranges. On the expedition to Chadyr Kul, where we continuously ascended the bed of the Toyanda stream, I did not fully realize the fact, and it was only after our subsequent journey towards Ush Turfân, where I had an opportunity of penetrating and crossing no less than four of these ranges, that I was convinced that this southern portion was of the same physical configuration as other portions of the Thien Shin as portrayed on the Russian maps. Fedchenko, proceeding apparently solely on the basis of this theory of the parallelism of ranges, has shown in his last map the country north-east of Kashghar t in much the same way as I have myself done, and he would doubtless have been much gratified, had he lived, to find his theories so soon verified.

An examination of the map accompanying this report will show the ideas I have myself formed of the ground lying between the Great Pamir and the Alai plateau, which last has been visited by M. Fedchenko. The position and extent of the Great and Little Pamirs have been accurately laid down, and it is hoped that the mapping of the ground between them and the Alai will be found to be not very far from correct; the geographical detail shown is the result of careful study.

On the construction of the Preliminary map accompanying this report.

The positions of all places in Eastern Turkestan, and Wakhan, that have been visited by members of the Mission, depend upon the astronomically fixed position of the Yangi-shahr or new citÿ of Kashghar, for full details of which the appendix, Sections A. and B., may be consulted.

* The altitude and bearings of this peak I measured with great care, with my theodolite, from both Yapchan and Bashghar, and I thus obtained two independent results of 25,364 feet and 25,328 feet.

t M. Fedchenko was never there, and, as far as I am aware, the Russians possess 34o survey of the ground to the north-east of ISsbghar.

~F~