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| 0353 |
The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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formed. We must therefore look back some hundreds of
thousands of years, to the time when these mountains were first
upheaved. Whether that upheaval was sudden, as Sir Henry
Howorth supposes, or gradual, as seems to be generally the
case in the formation of mountains, there would in either case
be clefts and hollows between the unevennesses which formed
the various ranges of the mountain chain. Snow would fall in
the upper parts, collect in masses in the hollows, and gradually
form into glaciers. Then these glaciers, each with its burden
of débris of rocks and stone from the mountain-sides, would
come creeping down and gradually fill up the bottoms of the
valleys parting the various ranges. In former times, on these
Pamirs, glaciers descended much lower than they do now, and
in all parts of them the moraines of old glaciers may be seen
down in the valley bottoms to which no glaciers now descend.
All these Pamirs were therefore in former times filled with
vast glaciers, and as the ice of them melted away the stony
detritus remained and formed the plains which are seen at the
present day. If the rainfall were more abundant, this detritus
would of course be washed out by the river flowing through
the valley ; but in these lofty regions, where the very lowest
part of the valleys is over twelve thousand feet above sea-level,
the rivers are frozen for the greater part of the year, they are
unable to do the work that is required of them, and th valleys
remain choked up with the old glacier-borne débris of bygone
ages. Lower down, however, in the states of Wakhan, Shignans
and Roshan, where the rivers have reached a level low enough
to remain unfrozen for a time sufficiently long to carry out their
duties properly, the valleys have been cleared out, the Pamir
country has disappeared, and in place of the broad flat valley
bottom, we see deep-cut gorges and narrow defiles.
I hope this description will have enabled my readers to
understand that the Pamirs do not form a high plateau or
tableland, as has often been supposed, but a series of valleys of
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