On the 2nd of December I left Iskardo, in the direction of Kashmir, by way of Dras, all other routes being shut with snow. My first march was to Turgu, seven miles. The ground was all the way covered with snow which had fallen during the night, but it thawed a good deal during the day, making the journey rather unpleasant. The road lay along the south bank of the river, at first over the level platform of lacustrine clay, among large boulders, which were scattered over its surface, but soon descending by a narrow and steep footpath, on the face of the clayey cliff, to the level of the river, to cross a deep bay, from which the clay formation has been entirely removed, to a large village three miles from Iskardo, through the cultivation of which the road ascended gradually, and proceeded on the barren stony slopes behind. About five miles from Iskardo, a spur, from the mountain range on the south, which abuts in a scarped cliff upon the river, has been taken advantage of by the inhabitants to build a small gateway, through which the road is made to run. The extreme steepness of the mountain mass which lies to the south and east, makes it scarcely possible to approach Iskardo along the south bank of the river from these directions, without passing through this gateway, and, therefore, a small party of soldiers is kept on this rocky pass by the Sikh rulers of the country. A species of Daphne was very common on the rocky hills about this pass, apparently an evergreen, as it was in full leaf in the midst of the snow. From the higher parts of the road, and from the rocky pass which overhangs the river, there is an extensive view over the barren sandy waste on the north bank of the river. The lacustrine clay is, at this end of the valley, very thick and but little excavated, forming cliffs which rise close to the river, which has, as it were, worn for itself a narrow channel in the clay formation. The banks or cliffs are of very different heights, and many of them consist of alluvial gravel and boulders, overlying and quite obscuring the clays. Behind Turgu, and in many places on the last part of the march, there are great masses of angular fragments of rock piled into a steeply sloping mass, as if they had fallen from the mountains behind, but so mixed with smaller fragments and with gravel, that it seems probable that they were accumulated under water.
WATERWORN ROCKS.
December, 1847.
The next day's march, from Turgu to Gol, round the great bend of the Indus, was entirely barren. On the western side of the curve several rocky spurs were crossed, but after the road turns to the south it runs generally on the surface of very elevated platforms of coarse alluvial debris, covered in many places with enormous boulders, partly derived, in all probability, from the fall of masses of rock from the cliffs above, but in more than one place so curiously arranged, at the apertures of lateral ravines, as to be, I think, almost certainly of glacial origin. Many of the large boulders which occurred in the alluvium were observed to be much waterworn, spherical cavities being worn out in them. Similar waterworn rocks were also seen in situ at great heights above the river, in places to which no water has at present access, and where it is difficult to understand in what way the effect was produced. Behind the alluvial platforms, which are generally one or two hundred feet above the level of the river, the mountains rise precipitously, in cliffs of granite, which has now replaced the slate rocks of Iskardo.
EXTENT OF LACUSTRINE CLAY.
December, 1847.
At the point where the river changes its direction from north to south-west, the mountains on the southern bank advance quite to the river, and on the north side also they approach very near. It would therefore, at first sight, appear that the lake, in which the clay formation of Iskardo has been deposited, had here terminated to the eastward, no clay being seen in the narrow ravine above Nar, or near the river anywhere between Nar and Gol. I had at first no doubt that I had reached the eastern extremity of the lake; but some time after passing the most northerly point of the ravine I observed a patch of very fine cream-coloured clay, quite similar to the finest portions of the Iskardo formation, clinging in a remarkable position on the flank of a very steep rocky cliff, not less than 1000 or 1200 feet above the river. Several other patches came into sight soon after, all high up on the mountain-sides; one above the village of Golochu, and others at intervals all the way to the junction of the Indus and Shayuk. I cannot, therefore, doubt that the lake in which the clay beds of Kiris were deposited, was the same as that which occupied the Iskardo basin; nor does it seem easy to fix its exact boundaries. The great height of the patches of clay, in the narrow channel above Nar, show that the depth of the lake had been very considerable; and if we assume a depth of 1500 feet, which seems necessary, and at the same time admit the arrangement of the ancient rocks to have been the same as at present, we must either suppose some great barrier to have existed in the narrow passage below Khapalu, or must admit that the Khapalu lake was also continuous with that of Iskardo. I did not, however, observe any beds of fine clay higher up than Kuru, in the narrow part of the ravine of the Shayuk, which would warrant the drawing such a conclusion; although vast masses of alluvium certainly abound there, piled at great heights above the river. Is it possible that these may at one time have been continuous, and have blocked up the whole valley, and that the portions now seen capping ridges, whose origin is otherwise inexplicable, are the last remnants of a continuous mass which occupied the whole interspace? and if so, to what are we to ascribe the deposition of such an enormous mass of alluvium-like accumulation?
JUNCTION OF INDUS WITH SHAYUK.
December, 1847.
To the eastward of the village of Gol the valley of the Indus again becomes a little wider, an open sandy plain extending round the junction of the two rivers. The cultivation round Gol is on a high platform of alluvium; but the road descends, soon after leaving the village, nearly to the level of the river, and continues over the low ground, skirting the mountains of the southern bank, till it reaches the junction of the two rivers, where it turns abruptly to the south, ascending the left bank of the Indus, which runs nearly due north in a narrow rocky ravine. A bluff projecting ridge of granite, sixty or eighty feet high, polished on the surface by aqueous action, and of a brilliantly brown-black colour, so that the nature of the rock is only discoverable by breaking it, here advances close to the river, and is crossed by a steep sinuous path, eked out by flights of steps, with wooden supports, where it would otherwise be impracticable. The Indus is here very narrow and deep, and runs with an extremely rapid current. The path, after crossing this ridge, again descends to the level of the river. Even in this narrow ravine I was surprised to find the fine cream-coloured clay of the lacustrine formation, similar to many of the beds of the same deposit round Iskardo. It was here quite on a level with the river.
INDUS VALLEY.
December, 1847.
The mountains rise on both sides of the Indus very abruptly, being almost always precipitous. From the narrowness of the valley the great elevation of these is not seen, and the lesser height of those on the right bank of the Indus, which form the termination of the chain separating that river from the Shayuk, is not brought prominently to notice. For more than two miles, the ravine continues very narrow, and several steep spurs are crossed. It then becomes gradually a little wider, narrow platforms of conglomerate skirting the stream, and changes its direction from nearly due south to south-east. The right bank is stony and unproductive the whole way, but on the left there is one small village, three miles from the junction of the Shayuk, and thence after three miles of desert, a succession of small villages continuing with little intermission on the surface of alluvial platforms as far as Parkuta, at which I encamped. In one of the villages a good many small juniper-trees were seen.
The lacustrine clay formation, though not continuous throughout the whole of this day's march, may be traced in patches, with so little interval that its former continuity cannot be doubted. The spots in which I observed its presence in the narrow ravine were all close to the river, the low level of the road not permitting an extended view of the higher slopes of the mountains. Further up, however, patches were in my subsequent April journey seen at considerable elevations, but in December the slopes were covered with snow to within a thousand feet of the river. In several places the clay formed cliffs, which rose perpendicularly from the Indus, and could be seen to be covered with modern alluvium deposited during floods, just as the ancient rocks are in other places. The clay appeared everywhere extremely fine, without any intermixture of sand or micaceous grains. I saw no appearance of fossils, which I think never occur in the very fine cream-coloured clays, but seem always to accompany more sandy, or at least gritty varieties, as if the influx of a small stream, and probably the proximity of land, were requisite to the existence of testaceous mollusks; while the central part of the lake, in which the very finest clays were deposited, was quite devoid of them.