On the map of the Jesuits, now two hundred years old (D’Anville, 1733) (Map 2), a series of mountains runs on the north side of the upper Brahmaputra, bearing from east to west the following names: Youc, Larkin, Tchimouran Coïran, Tchompa, Lop, Tchour, Takra concla, Kentaisse (Kailas) Latatsi, etc. These mountains and ranges have never been transferred to modern maps of Tibet, probably because geographers regarded the material collected by trained Tibetans as too unreliable and indefinite. Yet these chains of mountains are nothing else but the Trans-Himalaya, though the representation is confused and inexact.

When Brian Hodgson in his map of southern Tibet (Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal, No. xxvii.), here reproduced in facsimile (Map 3), drew a huge unbroken chain north of, and parallel to, the Tsangpo, he took a step which could only be based on the Jesuits’ map and the data he received in the year 1843 from the Maharaja of Nepal. No doubt lofty mountains existed to the north of the Tsangpo—that was known to the Jesuits even in the time of Kang Hi. But Hodgson’s hypothetical Nyenchhen-thangla (Trans-Himalaya), which he looks upon as a prolongation of the Karakorum, and the natural boundary between northern and southern Tibet, is by no means an original conception, and is no advance on previous knowledge, or, more correctly, theory. For already, in the year 1840, Dufour had inserted a similar huge uninterrupted chain north of, and parallel to, the Tsangpo, on the map which illustrates the famous description of the travels of the Lazarist missionary, Father Huc (Illust. 381)—Souvenirs d’un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine, 1844-46. Dufour’s map is even better than Hodgson’s, for he has adopted from the Jesuits’ map a northern affluent to the Tsangpo, passing through the great range, which, like the Jesuits, he calls Mts. Koïran.

Huc and Gabet were probably the first Europeans to cross the Trans-Himalaya, and one wonders where they made the passage. Probably by the Shang-shung-la along the Mongolian pilgrim road from Kuku-nor and Tsaidam to Lhasa. It is vain to seek any information on the subject in Huc’s famous book. During the two years Huc stayed in Macao he worked up the scanty notes he had made on his journey. He mentions Burkhan Bota, Shuga, and Tang-la, and also the large village Nakchu, where the caravans exchange their camels for yaks, but he says not a word about the pass by which he crossed one of the mightiest mountain systems of the world. He says, indeed, that he went over a colossal mountain range, and as its position agreed with that of the Mts. Koïran of Dufour and the Jesuits, he adopts this name, which he certainly had never heard on his journey, and which probably was changed on its way from Tibet to the Jesuits’ note-books in Pekin. All he has to say of his journey over the Trans-Himalaya is contained in the following sentences: “La route qui conduit de Na-Ptchu à Lha-Ssa est, en général, rocailleuse et très-fatigante. Quand on arrive à la chaîne des monts Koïran, elle est d’une difficulté extrême” (ii. p. 241).

Another attempt to represent the course of the Trans-Himalaya was made by Trelawney Saunders in his map of Tibet (Map 6), which is found in Markham’s Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (London, 1879), and in Edwin T. Atkinson’s The Himalayan Districts of the North-Western Provinces of India (Allahabad, 1882). Like Dufour and Hodgson, Saunders draws a huge continuous chain all through Tibet. For the western parts, north of Manasarowar, and for the eastern, south of Tengri-nor, he has relied on the cartography of the pundits; the rest, between 82° and 89½° E. long., is partly a reproduction of the Jesuits’ map, partly pure fancy, and has not the remotest resemblance to the reality, as will be apparent from a comparison of Saunders’ map with mine. I will only point out that the Trans-Himalaya consists not of one chain but of many, and that the source of the Chaktak-tsangpo lies to the south, not to the north of the principal one. All the central and largest part of the system, which I explored, is therefore quite incorrect on Saunders’ map.

In the year 1867 Colonel Montgomerie (Illust. 380) sent out three pundits for the purpose of compiling a map of the country north of Manasarowar. One of them was the incomparable and wonderful Nain Sing, another was the man who was at Yiachan prevented from discovering the source of the Indus. On their way to Tok-jalung they crossed the Trans-Himalaya at the Jukti-la, which they called Gugti-la, assigning to it a height of 19,500 feet: I found its height was 19,070 feet. Mr. Calvert crossed the same pass a year before me. On their return they crossed the Trans-Himalaya by following the eastern branch of the Indus down to where it breaks through the range and unites with the Gartok branch.

A pundit also went between Manasarowar and Tok-jalung, past the Ruldap-tso—a name and lake I sought for east and west in vain, but I will not therefore deny its existence. Moreover, of this pundit’s route I have no precise details. It seems likely that he crossed the Trans-Himalaya by a pass called Sar-lung.

On January 8, 1872, one of Montgomerie’s explorers, a young trained Tibetan, travelled over the Trans-Himalaya by the Khalamba-la, 17,200 feet high. In Markham’s account of this journey it is said that he returned across the mountains by the Dhok-la, though the actual water-parting pass he came to was much more probably the Dam-largen-la. This pass was crossed the following year (1873) by Nain Sing on his famous journey from Leh to Lhasa, which is described so conscientiously by Colonel Sir Henry Trotter. Nain Sing assigns to Dam-langren-la a height of 16,900 feet.

The great pundit A. K., or Krishna, who contends with Nain Sing for the foremost place, crossed the most easterly parts of the Trans-Himalaya on his journey in 1881, and more probably by the pass Shiar-gang-la than the Nub-kong-la, as I have already suggested; but from his map it is difficult to decide whether the Shiar-gang-la is a dividing pass of the first rank or not. In any case, it is situated on the chain which forms the watershed between the Salwin and the Brahmaputra, and is undoubtedly an immediate continuation of the Nien-chen-tang-la, or Trans-Himalaya. A similar assumption is also made by Colonel S. G. Burrard in his and Hayden’s admirable work, A Sketch of the Geography and Geology of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet (Calcutta, 1907). On map xvii. in this work Burrard has, quite rightly in my opinion, inserted the prolongation of the range, though we have no sure data about its course.

380. Colonel T. G. Montgomerie.381. Abbé Huc.
For the portrait of T. G. Montgomerie my thanks are due to the Colonel’s widow, and for that of Père Huc,probably not published before, to Mr. E. Schwartz, Paris.

Thus we find that after Father Huc several of Montgomerie’s and Trotter’s pundits, as well as Mr. Calvert in the year 1906, crossed the Trans-Himalaya in Tibet. So far as I know, there are only two more names to be added to these—namely, Littledale, who on his bold journey in 1894-95 passed over the system by the pass Guring-la (19,587 feet), and Count de Lesdain, who crossed it by the Khalamba-la in 1905. Both describe the magnificent spectacle Nien-chen-tang-la presents from Tengri-nor, but the latter added nothing to our knowledge of the Trans-Himalaya, for he made use of the same pass, the Khalamba-la, as Montgomerie’s pundit. In his narrative, Voyage au Thibet, par la Mongolie de Pékin aux Indes, he mentions not a single pass, much less its name. But he followed the western shore of Tengri-nor, and he says (p. 340): “Des massifs de montagnes très durs et absolument enchevêtrés formaient un obstacle insurmontable. En conséquence, je résolus de suivre le premier cours d’eau, dont la direction ferait présumer qu’il se dirigeait vers le Brahmapoutra. C’est ainsi que nous cheminâmes plusieurs jours en suivant les bords d’une rivière sans cesse grossissante, appelée Chang-chu....” This river is the Shang-chu, which comes from the Khalamba-la.