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0478 Southern Tibet : vol.7
Southern Tibet : vol.7 / Page 478 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000263
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Tibet, his verdict is certainly very unjust. Similar mistakes as those of the Schlag-
intweits have been made by all explorers, but no explorers of their time had pro-
moted science to such a wide extent as they did. Rawlinson says:

It is true that they ascended the Kara-Koram pass and made a détour beyond the
range in the direction of Khotan, which occupied them for twenty-six days and extended
to about three hundred miles, but they seem to have been as unsuccessful both in observing
and recording their observations, as they were bold in assigning positions on insufficient
evidence.

Sir Henry Rawlinson made a mistake himself in defending on insufficient evi-
dence the theory of a plateau-land which could be travelled over by wheels from
the Niti Pass to Khotan.¹ It is true that the Schlagintweits were mistaken in saying
they were the first Europeans to cross the Kara-korum and Kwen-lun, as it had
been done before both by YEFREMOFF and DANIBEG. But this is a mere question
of records, and I think very few geographers had ever heard the names of the two
Russians. In the popular account of their journeys, HERMANN VON SCHLAGINTWEIT
says everything that can be said of Danibeg.² Sir Henry once more returns to the
great features of the orography:

The whole country between India and Tartary may be considered as one broad
mountain range, the Himálayas forming the southern crest, and the Kuen-Luen the
northern; while the interior is sometimes cheered with lovely valleys like Cashmere, but
is more usually broken into rocky ravines, through which the affluents of the Indus force
their way towards the plains, or else stretches away in those vast treeless uplands which
are one of the chief characteristics of the range through its whole extent.

There is a northern »range» — the Tian-Shan.

According to Humboldt's system, which is still adopted generally as the ground-
work of our maps of Asia, the northern and southern ranges were united to the west of
Kashgar by a transverse ridge, which he names the Belût-Tágh, or »Cloud Mountains»;
but recent observation assures us that there is no such separate connection chain.

At the S. E. extremity of Pamir the table-land is lost in the rocky summits
of the Muz-tágh.