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

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0129 Southern Tibet : vol.2
Southern Tibet : vol.2 / Page 129 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000263
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

of the furthest source in Seng Tot or elsewhere, and the estimate of 50 miles for
the remaining course depends upon native reports and conjecture.³ It was Henry
Strachey who mapped the upper half of the well-known 550 miles throughout Ladak;
the lower half through Balti was mapped by Lieut. R. Young. The first reliable
knowledge was conquered by Moorcroft, Trebeck and Vigne.
Henry Strachey discusses the problem of the sources of the »Langchen or Guge
Satlej« in a most clever way.¹

In fact, Strachey had to make his choice amongst several different sources, and
as he did not know the country east of the Manasarovar he leaves the question open.
It is, however, curious that he could at all think of Gunchu-tso, although he knew
that it had no active effluence. But he may have been misled by the information
given by Gerard. He makes, however, a correct and strong difference between
Gunchu-tso and the two other lakes: »The basin of the Langchen is lacustrine in its
upper part, containing the Konkyu Lake in Horba without active effluence, and Tso
Mapham and Langnak in Kangri with a partial or intermittent one.«² The great
volume of water in the Satlej he explains from its comparatively southern situation.
He could have explained the cause why the Gunchu-tso has been cut off earlier than
Rakas-tal, if he had used his own physical law. For Gunchu-tso is situated nearer
the dry plateau-land and fed from the border of Chang-tang, whereas the Mana-
sarovar and Rakas-tal are fed from the snowy Himalaya. From the same cause
Panggong-tso has been isolated at a much earlier date than the Satlej lakes, about
which we even do not positively know whether they are going to be completely cut
off at all.³