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0450 Southern Tibet : vol.7
Southern Tibet : vol.7 / Page 450 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000263
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CHAPTER XXXII.

DREW AND OTHERS.

Frederic Drew undertook his important journeys before Forsyth, but his
work was published in 1875, and as he sometimes makes reference to the results
of Forsyth's mission, it may be well to consider him after that mission.

In Drew's opinion the Eastern Kwen-lun Mountains form the northern boundary
of the table-land of the Kwen-lun plains and Lingzi-tang, both separated from each
other by a range of hills. The plains are 16,000 and 17,000 feet high, and the
surrounding mountains 20,000 or 21,000 feet.¹ West of the high plateaux is »a
great range of mountains», which is called Mus-tagh and Kara-korum, the former
name belonging to the western, the latter to the eastern portion of the system. The
Mus-tagh—Kara-korum, however, consist of great mountain ridges.

Drew made some very important observations on climatic changes of the same
kind as Godwin-Austen also had made, and which have been carried so far in
our days. At Charasa in the Nubra valley he found the hard shale, graduating
into a crystalline rock, to be rounded, smoothed, and even polished, like a roche
moutonnée. At several places grooves and scratches were seen, denoting the move-
ment over it of a glacier. Such marks were seen up to more than 100 feet above
the alluvium. The whole valley must once have been filled by a gigantic glacier.
At Panimik he saw 200 feet high hills ice-moulded and striated all over. He found
marks of ice-moulding even up to 700 feet above the bottom of the valley, and he
thinks it possible that such marks could be followed still higher up the hill sides.

On the 14,500 feet high ridge behind Charasa he found granite blocks which
can only have been transported by glacier ice, and that glacier must have filled the
valley to 4,000 or 4,500 feet. Such glaciers must have reached down to Shayok
and perhaps a long way down in its valley.

Drew visited the western part of Panggong-tso, where he mentions Godwin-
Austen, the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and H. Strachey as preceding authorities.
He made several interesting observations on the lake, the water of which, as he