Southern Tibet : vol.7 / 404 ページ（カラー画像）

0404	Southern Tibet : vol.7
南チベット : vol.7

0404

Southern Tibet : vol.7

南チベット : vol.7

as parts of the Himalayan System. The last-mentioned spoke of a broad mountain
range between India and Tartary, Himalaya being its southern, Kwen-lun its northern
crest, thus creating the gigantic monster of *one* range with *two* crests. SAUNDERS
wisely pointed out that the Kwen-lun *was* a range just as well as the Himalaya,
and he could not see why a mountain with peaks of 28,000 feet in altitude should
not be called a range.

None of the rest had ever written such classical words as the following by Shaw:
Once across the Bara Lâcha Pass . . . . (or any other pass of the same range), you
enter a region where all gorges or valleys appear to have been filled up by an encroaching
sea of gravel, which has risen to within a few hundred feet of the summits of the ranges.
The space between the mountains no longer plunges down into a seemingly bottomless
ravine, whose sides narrow down till they barely leave room for the stream. Instead of
that it is occupied by a broad high-level plain, out of which the summit ranges merely
rise like undulations. We notice the prevalence of the *horizontal*, after the *vertical* lines
to which the Himâlaya has accustomed us. It is like leaving a Gothic cathedral, and
approaching the Parthenon. At the same time, a kind of drought seems to have fallen
over the face of the country. There are no vast fields of snow to supply streams of water,
and no frequent showers to maintain verdure.¹

In these few graphic and eloquent words Robert Shaw gives us the very cream
of the problem, and the fundamental characteristics of the most majestic building on
the earth's crust. He also proves to be an unusually intelligent observer quite familiar
with the great physical changes, which since millions of years have been, and still
to-day are going on between India and Eastern Turkestan. If a man of such great
merits enunciates what in his opinion is a general morphological truth, one has to
listen to him. And disregarding the genetic points of view, the geological strati-
fication and the historical building up of these immense mountain systems, only
devoting our attention to the goal at which the destroying and depositing forces
are aiming, he *may* be said to be right. But as long as the erosion is active the
goal will never be reached. And therefore we have to take the Tibetan high
plateaux and their gigantic mountain systems such as they are at present.

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト 『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ