So far we have considered the isolated peaks rather than the ranges themselves. It remains to study these latter. All of them are popularly regarded as forming part of the "Himalayas." But Himalaya—pronounced with the stress on the second syllable—simply means the "abode of snow"; and geographers have had to define the separate ranges into which this great Himalayan region is divided. The name of the Great Himalaya is consequently reserved for the supreme range which extends from the western borders of China, carries the great peaks, Mount Everest and Kinchinjunga, and runs through Kumaon and Kashmir to Nanga Parbat, and possibly farther. This is the culminating range of the earth's surface. The range to the north, on which stands K2 and some satellite peaks of 26,000 feet, is neither so long nor has it quite such lofty peaks. It is known as the Karakoram range because a pass called the Karakoram Pass crosses it. But a pass called the Mustagh also crosses it, and Mustagh means Ice Mountain, whereas Karakoram means black gravel. Mustagh, therefore, appears to me a much more appropriate name for this gigantic range of ice-clad mountains. It so happens that I am the only European who has crossed both passes. Each of them is close upon 19,000 feet in altitude, but the Karakoram, very curiously, has in summer no snow upon it, and the route leads over black gravel. It is a better known pass than the former, and, consequently, the name of black gravel got the start, and now this superb range of mountains is doomed for all time to suffer from this absurd nomenclature.
MOUNT KOLAHOI, LIDAR VALLEY
The range, however, lies far at the back of Kashmir, and it is not so much with it as with the true Himalaya range that we are here concerned. The mountain ranges which encircle the valley of Kashmir are the final prolongations of that mighty range which runs from the borders of Burma thirteen hundred miles away, and bifurcating at the Sutlej River, forms with its subsidiary spurs the cradle in which the Kashmir valley is set.
The southern branch of this bifurcation is known as the Pir Panjal range, and is that which bounds Kashmir on the south. It is the largest of all the lesser Himalayan ranges, and even at its extremity in Kashmir it carries many peaks exceeding 15,000 feet; the Tatakuti Peak, 30 miles south-west of Srinagar, 15,524 feet in height, being the most conspicuous.
The northern branch of the bifurcation at the Sutlej River of the great Himalayan range culminates in the Nun Kun peaks (23,410 feet and 23,250 feet), which stand conspicuously 3000 feet above the general crest of the range, and can be seen on clear days from Gulmarg. From near them, not far from the Zoji-la, an oblique range branches from the great Himalayan range, and constitutes the parting between the Jhelum River and the Kishenganga, the latter river draining the angle formed by the bifurcation. The height of this North Kashmir range, as Colonel Burrard calls it, is greatest near the point of bifurcation, one of its peaks, Haramokh (16,890 feet), reaching above the snow-line, and being the most conspicuous object which meets the eye of a traveller entering the valley from the south. Farther westward the range ramifies and declines.
The main line of the great range of the Himalayas has meanwhile continued from the remarkable depression at the Zoji Pass along by the Kamri Pass, to the immense mountain buttress of Nanga Parbat which, overhanging the deep defiles of the Indus, seems to form a fitting end to the mighty range which started on the confines of China. But there are great mountains beyond the Indus also, and whether these form a continuation of the great Himalayan axis which the river Indus would in that case have merely cut through in the gorges below Nanga Parbat, or whether the mountains west of the Indus are part of a separate range, we shall not know till these latter have been geologically examined.