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| 0271 |
Southern Tibet : vol.2 |
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OCR Text
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MOVEMENTS OF THE KUMDAN GLACIERS COM-
PARED WITH THE OSCILLATIONS IN THE LAKES.
The historical records we possess about the heights to which different glaciers
in the Himalayas and Kara-korums reached at different epochs are unreliable and
insufficient. And in most cases they do not reach any further back in time than
the memory of man. Therefore they do not permit us to decide whether the hydro-
graphical fluctuations of the lakes belong to a category of phenomena which include
the whole of the Himalaya and Tibet.
The natural remains, on the other hand, involve the whole post-glacial epoch.
A map of these mountains, showing the present extensions of glaciation, and giving
the situation of every old moraine would tell us that all the glaciers have retreated
since the glacial or pluvial epoch. In some cases we should be told that a certain
glacier some 50 or 60 years ago proceeded to a certain front moraine wall, from
which it nowadays may be separated by a considerable space of ice-free ground.
But all attempts to find out a periodical advance and retreat from old moraines
must so far be regarded as hypothetical and uncertain, and in some cases not
harmonizing with general rules in the glaciated region regarded as a whole.
There are, however, a group of glaciers, namely, the Aktash and Kumdan
glaciers at the right or western side of the upper Shayok, which on account of the
surrounding topography and on account of its immediate neighbourhood to the car-
avan road between Ladak and Eastern Turkestan, present us with an opportunity
to examine the periodical movements of the glaciers, backwards and forwards.
Such an examination, of great interest and value, has been made by Dr. T.
G. LONGSTAFF, from whose report I will quote the following extracts. ¹
The Kumdan glaciers rise in the neighbourhood of peak K₃₂ and flow at
right angles into the valley of the Shayok. During their minor cycles of advance,
one or more of these glaciers have on different occasions thrust their snouts right
across the course of the Shyok river, only to be stopped by the great cliffs on its
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