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 mass 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
passing through this gateway, and, therefore, a small
party of soldiers is kept on this rocky pass by the Sikh
rulers of the country. A species of Daphne was very
common on the rocky hills about this pass, 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 pass 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 masses of angular fragments of
rock piled into a steeply sloping mass, 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 accumulated under water.
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
coarse alluvial debris,1 covered in many places with enormous
boulders, partly derived, in all probability, from
the fall of masses 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 water-
worn, 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.
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 passing 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