NUBRA VALLEY.
October, 1847.
The lower part of the Nubra valley is very fertile, and on the east side cultivation extends, with little interruption, from Tirit as far as Panamik, in a belt varying in width from a few hundred feet to nearly a mile. The villages are large, and seem populous. Many of the houses are very substantially built, and the long sacred walls, called Mané, are numerous, and of great length and size. Several watercourses, which are carried along the sides of the hills at an elevation of several hundred feet above the cultivation, and are easily recognizable by the fringe of Hippophaë bushes, which forms an impenetrable belt along their margins, indicate a degree of industry and energy very unusual in Tibet, where, however, the amount of cultivable land is seldom sufficient to promise much reward to any extensive and elaborate system of irrigation.
As the advanced period of the year rendered exploration at great elevations scarcely practicable, and made it desirable to reach a lower level as soon as possible, I did not remain more than a week in Nubra. On the 22nd of October I started from Lyakjung, at the mouth of the Nubra river, towards Iskardo, following the course of the Shayuk river. The district of Nubra extends about thirty miles below the junction of the river of that name with the Shayuk; but I found the level valley gradually to diminish in width as I descended. On the 22nd of October I encamped at Hundar; on the 23rd, at Tertse; and on the 24th at Unmaru, beyond which village there is no cultivation, and the valley becomes extremely narrow. On the 25th of October I reached an encamping ground called Kuru, at the termination of the Nubra district, where the mountains, which for three days had gradually been encroaching on the valley, completely closed in, and the river entered a deep gorge, walled in on both sides by lofty and almost perpendicular cliffs of black slate.
LOWER NUBRA.
October, 1847.
FOSSIL SHELLS IN THE CLAY.
October, 1847.
The general aspect of the lower part of Nubra requires no particular description, as it presents much the same features as the other parts of the district. The mountains on both sides of the valley are not less steep, barren, and inaccessible than elsewhere in Tibet. The alluvial platforms, which were everywhere present, increased remarkably in thickness as they diminished in size. Widely spread out in the broadest parts of the valley, they were not more than from twenty to forty feet thick where cut across by the river, and sloped very gently. In the narrower parts of the valley they were often not less than a hundred feet high along the river. In structure these platforms varied much. The greater part certainly consisted of gravel and clay, quite unstratified, but the lower beds were very frequently fine clay, or fine sand, or alternations of these two. The superposition of the coarse beds to the fine was nearly uniformly observed, though occasionally, above the fine clays, alternations of gravel with thin beds of sand or clay were met with. In one place, on the north side of the river, nearly opposite to the village of Tertse, I found these beds to contain fresh-water shells. The fossiliferous bed was elevated very little above the present level of the river, and was composed of a fine somewhat sandy clay, stratified horizontally, and covered with upwards of fifty feet of coarse conglomerate. The shells, which were all small, were species of Planorbis and Lymnæa, apparently identical with those afterwards found in the neighbourhood of Iskardo, but quite different from those of the salt lake of Thogji.
The villages of Lower Nubra are not numerous, but some of them possess very extensive cultivation. Hundar in particular, at the mouth of a large ravine, by which a considerable tributary stream descends from the south (at the source of which there is a pass across the range into the valley of the Indus), is a very large village (probably the most populous in Nubra), with very fine orchards of apricot-trees. Walnut, mulberry, and Elæagnus became common at Unmaru, on the north bank of the river. Perhaps the gradual narrowing of the valley may have a considerable effect in modifying the climate, for the diminution of elevation is very inconsiderable, the river at Kuru being nearly 10,300 feet above the sea, or not more than 300 feet lower than the junction of the Shayuk and Nubra rivers.
In this part of its course, and at this advanced season, when the great summer floods are over, the Shayuk appears to be everywhere fordable. It is, however, a noble stream, with a rapid current; and is usually divided into many channels. Above Hundar, where I forded it, one branch was not less than 300 feet wide, and was from one to two feet deep. Opposite Tertse, again, I found the stream running in seven branches, of which three were from 100 to 150 feet wide, and had an average depth of about two feet, increased in the centre to about three. The other branches were, however, much smaller.
GREAT FLOOD OF THE SHAYUK.
October, 1847.
In several places between Hundar and Tertse, on the gravelly plain which skirted the river, I observed manifest traces of a flood, consisting of such rejectamenta as are usually seen deposited by swollen streams, fragments of wood and twigs, straw, sheep's dung, and other light materials, forming a bed two or three feet wide, continuous in many places for hundreds of yards, at a distance of not less than half a mile from the river. To my inquiries as to the nature of the flood which had deposited these reliquiæ, the invariable reply was, that a great flood had taken place five years before, by the bursting of a lake called Khundan Chu, at which time the whole course of the river was devastated, and much destruction of property, sometimes even life, ensued, particularly in the narrower parts of the valley. In most parts of the world the preservation of such insignificant vestiges of a flood for so long a period would have been impossible; but here, where rain is almost unknown, and where the winter falls of snow seldom exceed one or two inches, there are no disturbing causes which could prevent them from remaining till carried away or altered in position by another similar flood. I should, therefore, have had no difficulty in attaching credence to the testimony of the inhabitants of the country, even had I not, in my journey down the river, received the most abundant proofs that the flood was everywhere well known, at least as far as Iskardo.