Southern Tibet : vol.7 / 401 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0401	Southern Tibet : vol.7
南チベット : vol.7

0401

Southern Tibet : vol.7

南チベット : vol.7

headwaters of the Shayok, which pierce it through narrow, often almost tunnel-like, gorges;
while the latter (the water-parting) turns off to the north-east across the high Karakoram
plateau, winding about among the hills which stud its surface, sometimes coinciding for
a short distance with a ridge, and forming an imaginary line across the elevated plains.
He rightly does not believe in the possibility of constructing a railway across
the Kara-korum, the scheme of which had been discussed at that time.
He quite agrees with Severtsoff's views as expressed in his paper in the
J. R. G. S. 1870. Shaw finds that the manner of transition of the Himalaya System
into the Tian-shan System »is like that of a willow-wand which is bent almost double
without breaking».
In Sir Clements Markham's geographical paper there took place, in 1877
and 1878, an interesting controversy between Shaw and Saunders regarding the
Kara-korum. I have already considered Saunders' article of 1877. In his answer¹
to this, Shaw sharply maintains the difference between a range, which is a physical
feature, and a water-parting which is only a function. He puts the question: »Is the
water-parting between the Lob Basin, and the Indus Basin, throughout formed by a
range of mountains or no?»
So far as the western part of the water-parting is concerned, Shaw agrees
with Saunders who fixed it on the Mus-tagh Range. About its eastern continuation,
from Nubra and eastwards, they disagree. In Shaw's opinion Saunders is wrong in
making the Kara-korum the southern limit of the Tibetan plateau; for, going south
from the sources of the East Turkestan rivers, you are still on the Tibetan plateau,
and Saunders ignores the range which is broken through by the headwaters of
the Shayok.
Shaw quotes Dr. Scully who noticed that he had crossed the mighty snow
range of Mus-tagh, and then, after arriving at the northern side of it, asks: »but
where is the Kara-korum Range?» He finds some support in Dr. Thomson's
description also. Saunders, on the other hand, is simply looking on the maps and,
joining the sources of the Turkestan rivers, calls such a line the Kara-korum. In
opposition to Saunders, Shaw maintains that the Mus-tagh is a range in spite of
several rivers breaking through it.
Shaw says that at the beginning of the Eastern Mus-tagh this range is divorced
from the water-parting, which goes farther north and in which the Kara-korum Pass
is situated. The mistake of Saunders is, he says, that he makes this water-parting
a range and a continuation of the Western Mus-tagh. Saunders' three arguments
for the Kara-korum Range being also a water-parting, are answered and refuted in
a very clever way by Shaw in spite of the »limited vision of the observer on the
spot», of which Saunders, strange enough, had been talking. In Shaw's opinion the

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