LAKE SHISHA NAG AT SUNSET
This then, briefly, is a record of the successive phases of upheaval and subsidence through which Kashmir has passed. Through by far the greater portion of the earth's history—through perhaps ninety out of the hundred million years—Kashmir has lain beneath the sea. And it is only within the last four million years that it has finally emerged.
What has actually caused the final upheaval; from whence came the force which raised the mountains is not yet entirely known. One well-known theory is that the earth's crust in cooling has to accommodate itself to a constantly decreasing diameter, and so gets crinkled and crumpled into folds. Anyhow from whatever cause, and quite apart from the ordinary up-and-down movements of the crust, there has evidently been immense lateral pressure, and on the drive into Kashmir many instances may be observed of the once level strata being crumpled into folds as the leaves of a book might be on being laterally pressed. There has been, says Mr. Middlemiss, "a steadily acting lateral pressure of the earth's crust tending to bank it up against the central crystalline zone [that is the core of intrusive granite of which the line of great peaks is formed] by a movement and a resistance in two opposite directions." And besides this pressure, the effect of tangential stresses tending to compress the earth's surface laterally and so form corrugations on it, there was from some remote internal cause this welling up from below of vast masses of granite which forced their way through the pre-existing rocks and formed the high peaks, the core of the Himalayan ranges.
These were the approximate causes—though the ultimate causes are not known—from which the Kashmir mountains originated. And tremendous though the forces must have been to cause such mighty effects, there is no evidence that they were violent. The stupendous result may have been imperceptibly attained. If Nanga Parbat rose not more than one inch in a month, it would have taken only 26,600 years to rise from the sea-level, and this is but a moment in the vast epochs with which we are dealing. Nature has worked without haste and without violence. Slowly, relentlessly, and uninterruptedly her work has progressed till the great final result stands before us in all its impressive majesty.
Such was the origin and history of the Kashmir mountains. It remains to trace the course of life upon them, and picture their appearance in the various stages of their history.
THE TANNIN GLEN, LIDAR VALLEY