Western Himalaya and Tibet Part 15

An aqueduct or ca.n.a.l extends in a direct line from the palace towards the mountains, a distance of at least a mile. It is an exceedingly ma.s.sive work, consisting of two walls raised perhaps fifteen feet above the level of the plain, and built of very large blocks of hewn stone. The intervening s.p.a.ce is filled with earth. At present, a small conduit, a foot or so wide, brings all the water which is required for the use of the inhabitants of Iskardo; but a very large quant.i.ty might be conveyed along the aqueduct, and the work is so strong and substantial that very little repair would be requisite to restore it to its original condition.

The fortified post of the present rulers of the country is built on the margin of the platform of alluvium, on the right bank of the little stream which joins the Indus to the east of the rock of Iskardo, and is separated by a hollow from the palace and the princ.i.p.al part of the village. It is built of unburnt brick, and is extremely irregular in shape, with rounded bastions at the angles.

The houses of Iskardo are very much scattered over a large extent of surface, so that there is no appearance of a town; nor is the population in the immediate neighbourhood of the rock so extensive as that of some of the more remote villages in the valley, and especially of those on the banks of the Shigar river, which are very richly cultivated. Many of the Iskardo houses, however, are very good, being often of two stories, and built of unburnt bricks in a framework of wood. Latticed windows, covered with paper or small plates of mica, are also common. The roofs are all flat, and covered with mud beaten hard.

[Sidenote: LACUSTRINE CLAY.

_November, 1847._]

The lacustrine clay formation occurs in great quant.i.ty throughout the valley of Iskardo, and is nowhere seen in greater perfection than in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, where the cliffs facing the Indus, and those along the little lateral streams which descend from the south, exhibit an abundance of sections of these beds. The height of the cliffs is very variable; but it is seldom less than thirty feet, and to the east of the town is as much as a hundred feet. The clay formation varies much in appearance, being most commonly a very fine unctuous cream-coloured clay, stratified quite horizontally, but occasionally gritty and mixed with numerous particles of mica. Now and then thin beds of sand and of small waterworn pebbles alternate with the finer clays. In many places near the rock of Iskardo, the beds are very irregular, undulating a good deal, and at times exhibiting very remarkable flexures, as if the isolated rocky ma.s.s (which must have once been under water) had formed eddies in the lake, and prevented that regularity of deposition which is elsewhere so universal.

Fossils are very rare in these clays, but occurred in several different localities. Close to Iskardo I once found a very few small specimens of a _Lymnaea_ and _Planorbis_, but after repeatedly searching carefully did not succeed in obtaining any more. I was more fortunate in two places east of Iskardo, where fresh-water sh.e.l.ls are sufficiently common in one or two thin seams of very fine clay, mixed with a good deal of apparently vegetable matter. The great ma.s.s of the clay is, however, quite non-fossiliferous.

The surface of the clay formation round Iskardo is very undulating, and is often covered with ma.s.ses of large boulders. Opposite two of the ravines which penetrate the mountains on the southern side of the valley, two very remarkable banks of boulders project forward into the valley. They consist of very large fragments of rock, angular or more or less rounded, piled on one another to a height of forty or fifty feet. They terminate abruptly, and are, I think, evidently moraines.

On the very top of the isolated rock, in the middle of the Iskardo plain, horizontal beds of coa.r.s.e sandstone rest upon the hard clay-slate of which the rock is composed. This sandstone crumbles with great ease in the hand, the particles of which it is composed being very slightly coherent. These beds, in which I could find no traces of sh.e.l.ls or of vegetable remains, are elevated at least 800 or 1000 feet above the level of the Indus. The sandstone seems to cap the whole hill, but is exposed only in a few places, being in a great measure covered by the loose drift or alluvium which has been deposited above it.

[Sidenote: VEGETATION.

_November, 1847._]

The vegetation of Iskardo had so entirely disappeared, that I was able to form very little idea of its nature. A few shrubby species, and some withered fragments of autumn flowering plants, alone remained. On the whole, I was struck with the similarity of the few plants which I recognized with those of Nubra and Le. _Artemisiae_ and _Chenopodiaceae_ were still abundant. _Hippophae_ was the universal shrub along all the streamlets, and _Lycium_ was common in sandy places; a berberry (the same already seen at Khapalu) was also frequent. The few novelties were Kashmir plants. _Lycopsis arvensis_, _Prunella vulgaris_, a thistle, a species of _Sium_, some gentians, and _Ranunculus aquatilis_, were the most Indian forms which I met with. From the mountains I procured specimens of a juniper (_J. excelsa_), and of the alpine birch of the Himalaya, which skirts the southern borders of the Tibetan region, without extending into the driest parts of that country.

CHAPTER VIII.

Leave Iskardo in the direction of Kashmir -- First march through snow to Turgu -- Lacustrine clay -- it extends into narrow valleys beyond Nar -- Gol -- Junction of Indus and Shayuk -- Parkuta -- Tolti -- Kartash -- Extensive lacustrine deposits -- Tarkata -- Road turns up the Dras river -- Ulding Thung -- Fall of snow -- Hardas -- Karbu -- Continued snow -- Dras -- Find pa.s.s in front shut by deep snow -- Obliged to return to Iskardo -- Rafts and rope-bridges on Indus -- _Elaeagnus_ and Apricot apparently wild -- Winter at Iskardo.

[Sidenote: UPPER PART OF ISKARDO PLAIN.

_December, 1847._]

On the 2nd of December I left Iskardo, in the direction of Kashmir, by way of Dras, all other routes being shut with snow. My first march was to Turgu, seven miles. The ground was all the way covered with snow which had fallen during the night, but it thawed a good deal during the day, making the journey rather unpleasant. The road lay along the south bank of the river, at first over the level platform of lacustrine clay, among large boulders, which were scattered over its surface, but soon descending by a narrow and steep footpath, on the face of the clayey cliff, to the level of the river, to cross a deep bay, from which the clay formation has been entirely removed, to a large village three miles from Iskardo, through the cultivation of which the road ascended gradually, and proceeded on the barren stony slopes behind. About five miles from Iskardo, a spur, from the mountain range on the south, which abuts in a scarped cliff upon the river, has been taken advantage of by the inhabitants to build a small gateway, through which the road is made to run. The extreme steepness of the mountain ma.s.s which lies to the south and east, makes it scarcely possible to approach Iskardo along the south bank of the river from these directions, without pa.s.sing through this gateway, and, therefore, a small party of soldiers is kept on this rocky pa.s.s by the Sikh rulers of the country. A species of _Daphne_ was very common on the rocky hills about this pa.s.s, apparently an evergreen, as it was in full leaf in the midst of the snow. From the higher parts of the road, and from the rocky pa.s.s which overhangs the river, there is an extensive view over the barren sandy waste on the north bank of the river. The lacustrine clay is, at this end of the valley, very thick and but little excavated, forming cliffs which rise close to the river, which has, as it were, worn for itself a narrow channel in the clay formation. The banks or cliffs are of very different heights, and many of them consist of alluvial gravel and boulders, overlying and quite obscuring the clays. Behind Turgu, and in many places on the last part of the march, there are great ma.s.ses of angular fragments of rock piled into a steeply sloping ma.s.s, as if they had fallen from the mountains behind, but so mixed with smaller fragments and with gravel, that it seems probable that they were acc.u.mulated under water.

[Sidenote: WATERWORN ROCKS.

_December, 1847._]

The next day's march, from Turgu to Gol, round the great bend of the Indus, was entirely barren. On the western side of the curve several rocky spurs were crossed, but after the road turns to the south it runs generally on the surface of very elevated platforms of coa.r.s.e alluvial debris, covered in many places with enormous boulders, partly derived, in all probability, from the fall of ma.s.ses of rock from the cliffs above, but in more than one place so curiously arranged, at the apertures of lateral ravines, as to be, I think, almost certainly of glacial origin. Many of the large boulders which occurred in the alluvium were observed to be much waterworn, spherical cavities being worn out in them. Similar waterworn rocks were also seen _in situ_ at great heights above the river, in places to which no water has at present access, and where it is difficult to understand in what way the effect was produced. Behind the alluvial platforms, which are generally one or two hundred feet above the level of the river, the mountains rise precipitously, in cliffs of granite, which has now replaced the slate rocks of Iskardo.

[Sidenote: EXTENT OF LACUSTRINE CLAY.

_December, 1847._]

At the point where the river changes its direction from north to south-west, the mountains on the southern bank advance quite to the river, and on the north side also they approach very near. It would therefore, at first sight, appear that the lake, in which the clay formation of Iskardo has been deposited, had here terminated to the eastward, no clay being seen in the narrow ravine above Nar, or near the river anywhere between Nar and Gol. I had at first no doubt that I had reached the eastern extremity of the lake; but some time after pa.s.sing the most northerly point of the ravine I observed a patch of very fine cream-coloured clay, quite similar to the finest portions of the Iskardo formation, clinging in a remarkable position on the flank of a very steep rocky cliff, not less than 1000 or 1200 feet above the river. Several other patches came into sight soon after, all high up on the mountain-sides; one above the village of Golochu, and others at intervals all the way to the junction of the Indus and Shayuk. I cannot, therefore, doubt that the lake in which the clay beds of Kiris were deposited, was the same as that which occupied the Iskardo basin; nor does it seem easy to fix its exact boundaries. The great height of the patches of clay, in the narrow channel above Nar, show that the depth of the lake had been very considerable; and if we a.s.sume a depth of 1500 feet, which seems necessary, and at the same time admit the arrangement of the ancient rocks to have been the same as at present, we must either suppose some great barrier to have existed in the narrow pa.s.sage below Khapalu, or must admit that the Khapalu lake was also continuous with that of Iskardo. I did not, however, observe any beds of fine clay higher up than Kuru, in the narrow part of the ravine of the Shayuk, which would warrant the drawing such a conclusion; although vast ma.s.ses of alluvium certainly abound there, piled at great heights above the river. Is it possible that these may at one time have been continuous, and have blocked up the whole valley, and that the portions now seen capping ridges, whose origin is otherwise inexplicable, are the last remnants of a continuous ma.s.s which occupied the whole inters.p.a.ce? and if so, to what are we to ascribe the deposition of such an enormous ma.s.s of alluvium-like acc.u.mulation?

[Sidenote: JUNCTION OF INDUS WITH SHAYUK.

_December, 1847._]

To the eastward of the village of Gol the valley of the Indus again becomes a little wider, an open sandy plain extending round the junction of the two rivers. The cultivation round Gol is on a high platform of alluvium; but the road descends, soon after leaving the village, nearly to the level of the river, and continues over the low ground, skirting the mountains of the southern bank, till it reaches the junction of the two rivers, where it turns abruptly to the south, ascending the left bank of the Indus, which runs nearly due north in a narrow rocky ravine. A bluff projecting ridge of granite, sixty or eighty feet high, polished on the surface by aqueous action, and of a brilliantly brown-black colour, so that the nature of the rock is only discoverable by breaking it, here advances close to the river, and is crossed by a steep sinuous path, eked out by flights of steps, with wooden supports, where it would otherwise be impracticable. The Indus is here very narrow and deep, and runs with an extremely rapid current. The path, after crossing this ridge, again descends to the level of the river. Even in this narrow ravine I was surprised to find the fine cream-coloured clay of the lacustrine formation, similar to many of the beds of the same deposit round Iskardo. It was here quite on a level with the river.

[Sidenote: INDUS VALLEY.

_December, 1847._]

The mountains rise on both sides of the Indus very abruptly, being almost always precipitous. From the narrowness of the valley the great elevation of these is not seen, and the lesser height of those on the right bank of the Indus, which form the termination of the chain separating that river from the Shayuk, is not brought prominently to notice. For more than two miles, the ravine continues very narrow, and several steep spurs are crossed. It then becomes gradually a little wider, narrow platforms of conglomerate skirting the stream, and changes its direction from nearly due south to south-east. The right bank is stony and unproductive the whole way, but on the left there is one small village, three miles from the junction of the Shayuk, and thence after three miles of desert, a succession of small villages continuing with little intermission on the surface of alluvial platforms as far as Parkuta, at which I encamped. In one of the villages a good many small juniper-trees were seen.

The lacustrine clay formation, though not continuous throughout the whole of this day's march, may be traced in patches, with so little interval that its former continuity cannot be doubted. The spots in which I observed its presence in the narrow ravine were all close to the river, the low level of the road not permitting an extended view of the higher slopes of the mountains. Further up, however, patches were in my subsequent April journey seen at considerable elevations, but in December the slopes were covered with snow to within a thousand feet of the river. In several places the clay formed cliffs, which rose perpendicularly from the Indus, and could be seen to be covered with modern alluvium deposited during floods, just as the ancient rocks are in other places. The clay appeared everywhere extremely fine, without any intermixture of sand or micaceous grains. I saw no appearance of fossils, which I think never occur in the very fine cream-coloured clays, but seem always to accompany more sandy, or at least gritty varieties, as if the influx of a small stream, and probably the proximity of land, were requisite to the existence of testaceous mollusks; while the central part of the lake, in which the very finest clays were deposited, was quite devoid of them.

[Sidenote: PARKUTA.

_December, 1847._]

Parkuta is a very large village, three or four hundred feet above the river, occupying both slopes of a deep ravine cut in the thick ma.s.s of alluvium by a large stream from the south. The alluvium is scarped towards the Indus, and a low granitic hill, the cause of its acc.u.mulation to such a height, just rises above the general surface of the platform. This is covered with a ma.s.s of buildings, formerly the residence of the Rajah of Parkuta, a branch of the same family who ruled at Iskardo, and dependent on them while that state remained independent; he has, however, been removed by the Sikhs, and his house is at present untenanted. The village is large, with extensive cultivation, and many fine fruit-trees. Vines are plentiful, climbing over the poplars.

[Sidenote: TOLTI.

_December, 1847._]

On the 5th of December my day's journey carried me to Tolti, a distance of twelve miles. The valley continued narrow, and the mountains rose precipitously on both sides. On the early part of the march there were many villages, and much cultivation on the left bank.

The village of Urdi, three or four miles from Parkuta, seemed very populous, and extended for a great distance along the river. It was remarkable for an aqueduct supported on pillars of stone, which crossed a ravine immediately above the village. At this spot the cultivation terminated abruptly, and the alluvial platform was for more than a mile, during which s.p.a.ce it gradually narrowed by the encroachments of the cliffs, covered with an acc.u.mulation of very large granitic boulders, which seemed to have fallen on it from the mountains behind.

[Sidenote: KARTASH.

_December, 1847._]

As I approached Tolti the valley of the Indus became much more rugged and narrow. A long gentle ascent to a ridge more than a thousand feet above the bottom of the valley, but which dipped abruptly to the river, occupied the latter part of the march. At Tolti the belt of cultivation is very narrow, just skirting the river on very narrow platforms of alluvium, which are irrigated by artificial ca.n.a.ls carried with considerable labour between the fields and the mountains.

Tolti was the most gloomy village which I had yet seen, the precipitous mountains forming a circle all round it, and almost shutting out the light of day. The bird's-nest fort in the ravine behind the village, perched on the top of a rock (in a most untenable position, though probably well suited for defence against sudden attack), accorded well with the gloomy aspect of the place. The temperature was here considerably lower than in the more open valley, as large patches of snow lay still unmelted in the fields, though four days had elapsed since its fall. At Gol, two days before, it had quite melted. On a bank a mile or two below Tolti, I saw a few trees of _Populus Euphratica_, just recognizable by a few withered leaves which still remained on the tree.

From Tolti, I made three marches to Tarkata, a small village on the Indus, six miles below its junction with the river of Dras. The general aspect of the valley of the Indus was but little changed in this distance, notwithstanding a very long and remarkable bend of the river above Kartash, in which its direction is to the eastward of north. From Tolti, the easiest road in an upward direction crosses the Indus, and proceeds on the right bank; but to avoid the labour of crossing, I suppose, my guides conducted me by a road on the left bank. On this side, the lower part of the valley is so steep as to be impracticable; and I found it necessary to ascend at once from Tolti on a stony ridge, almost directly away from the river. The ascent was long and fatiguing; the ridge being capped, in the same manner as that above Kunes on the Shayuk, with ma.s.ses of alluvium. The ridge was more than 1500 feet above the river, and its upper part was covered with snow, through which the path lay for four or five miles, after which it descended very abruptly to the river, which had been in sight almost all the way, generally running among precipitous rocks, but with a few villages scattered at intervals on the northern bank. After regaining the bank of the river, the road was for five or six miles nearly level, pa.s.sing opposite the village of Kartash, with a fort on a hill. Here still resides the Rajah Ali Sher Khan, the most intelligent of the princes of Balti; though now past the prime of life, he still retains the intelligence and kind hospitality for which he is so deservedly praised by Vigne.

[Sidenote: INDUS VALLEY.

_December, 1847._]

Kartash being situated at the northern or lower end of the great bend of the Indus, and in an extremely narrow part of the ravine, is a most sombre-looking place. It is possible, however, that in summer, when the villages are green with cultivation and fruit-trees, the appearance of this and other places may be less gloomy, and that, from having only seen this part of Tibet in the depth of winter, I may be disposed to regard it in too unfavourable a point of view. The abrupt and precipitous rise of the mountains on all sides must undoubtedly tend strongly to modify the summer temperature, which, from the want of rain, and the reflection from ma.s.ses of bare rock, would otherwise be oppressive. The fort seems to have some good buildings, and to be kept in excellent order, and the village looked extensive and prosperous.

All along the narrow ravine, from Tolti nearly as far as Tarkata, deposits of alluvium were very extensively developed, not only in the valley of the river, but at considerable heights on the ridges. There was, however, I believe, none of the lacustrine clay, as contradistinguished from the coa.r.s.er alluvium. I speak here with considerable hesitation, as I find with regret that I have not in my notes attended with sufficient care to the distinction between the two, not having at the time sufficiently adverted to their probably different origin. I am now disposed to think that in the narrow ravine above Tolti was situated the barrier which bounded on the east the lake basin of Iskardo, a vast inland sea, which must have extended thence in a north-westerly direction as far as Rondu. This barrier, if my supposition be correct, must have consisted of a ma.s.s of coa.r.s.e drift or alluvium, entirely blocking up the narrow ravine to a height of three thousand feet or more above the present level of the Indus.

The mountains all along this ravine are extremely elevated, the peaks above Kartash (from which a pa.s.s leads to Khapalu on the Shayuk) being, I should think, not less than 18,000 feet. The bareness and desolation of their sides exceeded anything I had seen since leaving Iskardo, and quite equalled the most rugged parts of Tibet which I had yet visited. They consisted of large ma.s.ses of rock, split and fractured in every direction, often very precipitous, without a vestige of soil, and with scarcely the slightest traces of vegetation.

Immense tracts, both along the river and on the slopes of the ravines descending from the mountains, were covered with boulders or with angular fragments of rock, strewed irregularly on the surface, or piled in ma.s.ses one on another. Granite formed the great ma.s.s of the mountains, mixed with stratified rocks, which were always highly metamorphic, but extremely variable in appearance, sometimes, though rarely, having the appearance of ordinary gneiss. A singular porphyritic rock appeared (as boulders) along the river in one place only.

About two miles west of Tarkata, the Indus resumes its more usual direction, and, at the same time, its valley becomes somewhat more open, the mountains, without any diminution of elevation, receding considerably from the river. Their lower slopes present a very different aspect from those in other parts of the Indus, being composed not of primitive rock, but of a soft and almost incoherent sandstone, alternating irregularly and without any definite order with boulder conglomerate, and fine clay. These beds, which are very extensively developed on both sides of the river, around the village of Tarkata, for some distance in both directions, attain a thickness of at least six or seven hundred feet. They are, however, very irregular, forming a succession of ridges separated by deep ravines or gullies, on the sides of which fine sections of the strata are generally exposed, showing them to be uniformly horizontal, and to consist of a great many alternations of sand, clay, and drift. Above Tarkata, very fine clays were abundant.

[Sidenote: SOFT SANDSTONE ROCKS.

_December, 1847._]

The sandstone, of which a greater part of these curious deposits consists, is formed princ.i.p.ally of coa.r.s.e grains of quartz, which only cohere very slightly, and easily crumble under pressure. It is quite similar in appearance to the sandstone which occurs on the summit of the rock of Iskardo, differing only in being very much more extensively developed than that is, and in being a.s.sociated and alternating with the very fine clays resembling those which occupy the lower levels of the valley of Iskardo. The sandstones of Tarkata did not appear to be fossiliferous, nor did I, in the slight examination I was able to give them, discover any sh.e.l.ls in the fine clays in this neighbourhood. The general similarity, however, of these deposits to the lacustrine clays of the Iskardo valley, makes it nearly certain that their origin is similar, while the a.s.sociation of the sandstones and the fine clays in the neighbourhood of Tarkata, renders it probable that I am right in a.s.suming the arenaceous beds of the summit of the rock of Iskardo to be lacustrine.

[Sidenote: FLOATING ICE.

_December, 1847._]

Ever since leaving Iskardo, the weather had been very unsettled, but no more snow had fallen. The sky had been pretty generally overcast with light clouds, and during the day the wind had almost invariably blown down the river, generally with great violence, and, especially in the narrowest parts of the valley, in furious gusts, against which it was most laborious to make any progress. The mornings had been always frosty, but the temperature rose in the middle of the day several degrees above 32. On the 8th of December, a sudden increase of cold seemed to take place, the temperature not rising above the freezing-point. Large cakes of ice, which appeared early on the morning of that day, floating down the river, indicated an evident commencement of very severe weather in the upper part of its course, and the descent of such ma.s.ses of ice, in cakes of from one to ten feet in diameter, tended very much to lower the temperature of all parts of the river to which they extended. The elevation of Tarkata I found to be 7800 feet above the sea.

The road from Iskardo to Kashmir leaves the valley of the Indus at the junction of the river of Dras, and follows the course of that river almost to its source. The lower part of the valley of Dras is a deep and narrow rocky ravine, bordered by precipices of granite, which are so steep that the bottom of the valley is quite inaccessible. In pa.s.sing from the Indus into the valley of Dras, the road crosses the granitic spur which separates the two rivers, at an elevation of about 2000 feet above the Indus, ascending to this height very rapidly along a steep spur, which recedes almost in a perpendicular direction from that river. From the shoulder of this ridge, which was elevated probably about 10,000 feet, the course of the Indus was visible for some distance above the junction of the river of Dras. It appeared to be hemmed in very closely by rocky mountain spurs. A good many patches of fine lacustrine clay were in sight, on both banks.