In the immediate neighbourhood of Pashkyum the rocks consist of coarse-grained grey or white sandstones, often containing small water-worn pebbles, and alternating with dark crumbling pyritiferous shales. These rocks, which dip to the east or south-east, at an angle of not more than 15°, rise on the north side of the valley to the summit of a long sloping ridge, which appears to overhang the Indus. As these sandstones and shales contained, so far as I could observe, no fossils, their age is a matter of complete uncertainty. They were quite independent of the modern lacustrine formation, patches of which, perfectly horizontally stratified, and therefore unconformable to the other, were seen in several places resting on the sandstone. These sandstones perhaps reach as far as the Indus, but I was not able to determine how far they extended to the southward, in which direction high and rugged mountains, now covered with snow, skirted the valley at a distance of a few miles.
KARGIL.
September, 1848.
On the 23rd of September, I followed the Pashkyum river to its junction with that of Dras. Crossing, at starting, to the left bank of the river, the road lay for a mile through cultivated lands; it then ascended to a platform of alluvium, which blocked up the valley, while the river disappeared in a narrow ravine far to the right. Five miles from Pashkyum, I descended very abruptly from this elevated plain, to the village of Kargil, where the Pashkyum river is joined by a large stream from Suru, called by Moorcroft the Kartse; which I crossed by a good wooden bridge, close to a small fort, occupied by a Thannadar with a small party of soldiers. The cultivated lands of Kargil, which is elevated about 8300 feet, are extensive and well wooded; but immediately below, the valley becomes narrow and rocky, and continues so for more than a mile, till the stream joins the Dras river. Nearly due south of Kargil the stratified rocks of the mountains are replaced by igneous rocks, and the point of contact of the two is well marked on the precipitous face of a lofty peak. At first the igneous rock was dark and resembling greenstone, but it soon changed to granite, which, as I had observed in April, occurs everywhere in the valley of Dras, below Karbu.
I encamped on the right bank of the Dras river, about a mile above the village of Hardas. Henceforward my route was the same as I had travelled in April. On the 24th I travelled to Tashgong, and on the 25th I arrived at Dras. In most parts of the valley I found a great deal of alluvium, but I saw none of the fine clay which is characteristic of the purely lacustrine strata above the village of Bilergu, where I had observed it in April. Gravelly conglomerate was everywhere the prevailing form,—sometimes indurated, but generally soft and shingly. Most of these deposits were unstratified, but distinct stratification was far from uncommon. The alluvium often capped low hills in the open valley many hundred feet above the bed of the river, and it was observed at frequent intervals in every part of the valley, from the junction of the Pashkyum river to Dras itself.
ALLUVIUM OF DRAS.
September, 1848.
The great extent and remarkable forms of alluvium which I had seen in the district through which I had travelled, between Kalatze and Dras, induced me to note with care the position and composition of the alluvial beds of the Dras valley. The known low elevation of the Zoji pass, between Dras and Kashmir, which is only 11,300 feet above the sea, made the great extent and continuity of these deposits very remarkable, and with difficulty explicable, unless on the supposition of the existence of a series of lakes separated from one another by extensive accumulations of alluvium, now to a great extent removed by denudation. The lacustrine clays of lower Dras, about Ulding, appear continuous with those of the Indus valley about Tarkata, but the clays of Pashkyum, which are separated from them by a very thick mass of alluvium, which occupies that part of the Dras and Pashkyum rivers immediately above the junction of the two, may have been deposited in an isolated lake. Further east again, at Lamayuru, there are beds of pure clay as high as the summit of the Zoji pass, so that the alluvial beds of the upper part of the Phatu ridge must have separated the lake in which these were deposited from the more western waters, which (it may be conjectured) at the same time covered the whole of the valley of Molbil and Pashkyum.
The vegetation of Dras was still very Tibetan, but transitional forms were becoming frequent. The Chenopodiaceæ (except Eurotia) had all disappeared, but Artemisiæ and Umbelliferæ were very abundant. The new forms were all Kashmirian, and indicated a considerable increase of humidity: a small white-flowered balsam was observed not far from Hardas, and Prunella, Thymus Serpyllum, an Achillea, Senecio, Galium, and Silene inflata were all seen below the fort of Dras. At that place the harvest was but just over; indeed, a field or two of wheat were still uncut.
MATEN.
September, 1848.
On the 26th of September, I marched to Maten, along a road which, in April, had been entirely covered with deep snow. Part of the road was rocky, but in general the valley was open. During this day's journey, a very great change took place in the vegetation. Hitherto, Kashmirian plants had been the exception, the greater part of the species being Tibetan; to-day the reverse was the case, most of the plants seen being those common in the comparatively moist climate of Kunawar, or species new to me, but belonging to families or genera which inhabit a more humid climate than Tibet. Groves of dwarf willows lined the banks of the stream, and nearly sixty species of plants not observed in Tibet were collected during the day. Vitis, Aconitum, Hypericum, Vernonia, a prickly juniper, Convallaria, and Tulipa, may be selected as illustrative of the greatness of the change, which was particularly interesting from its suddenness. Numerous Tibetan forms no doubt still lingered, but principally such as extend into Kashmir. At Maten the barley was still uncut, notwithstanding that it is upwards of a thousand feet lower than Le, at which place harvest was nearly over at the time of my departure.
ZOJI PASS.
September, 1848.