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 masses 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 coarser 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 northwesterly
direction as far as Rondu. This barrier, if
my supposition be correct, must have consisted of a
mass of coarse 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 pass
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 masses 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
masses one on another. Granite formed the great mass
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,