The mountains all along this ravine are extremely elevated, the peaks above Kartash (from which a pass leads to Khapalu on the Shayuk) being, I should think, not less than 18,000 feet. The bareness and desolation of their sides exceeded anything I had seen since leaving Iskardo, and quite equalled the most rugged parts of Tibet which I had yet visited. They consisted of large masses of rock, split and fractured in every direction, often very precipitous, without a vestige of soil, and with scarcely the slightest traces of vegetation. Immense tracts, both along the river and on the slopes of the ravines descending from the mountains, were covered with boulders or with angular fragments of rock, strewed irregularly on the surface, or piled in masses one on another. Granite formed the great mass of the mountains, mixed with stratified rocks, which were always highly metamorphic, but extremely variable in appearance, sometimes, though rarely, having the appearance of ordinary gneiss. A singular porphyritic rock appeared (as boulders) along the river in one place only.
About two miles west of Tarkata, the Indus resumes its more usual direction, and, at the same time, its valley becomes somewhat more open, the mountains, without any diminution of elevation, receding considerably from the river. Their lower slopes present a very different aspect from those in other parts of the Indus, being composed not of primitive rock, but of a soft and almost incoherent sandstone, alternating irregularly and without any definite order with boulder conglomerate, and fine clay. These beds, which are very extensively developed on both sides of the river, around the village of Tarkata, for some distance in both directions, attain a thickness of at least six or seven hundred feet. They are, however, very irregular, forming a succession of ridges separated by deep ravines or gullies, on the sides of which fine sections of the strata are generally exposed, showing them to be uniformly horizontal, and to consist of a great many alternations of sand, clay, and drift. Above Tarkata, very fine clays were abundant.
SOFT SANDSTONE ROCKS.
December, 1847.
The sandstone, of which a greater part of these curious deposits consists, is formed principally of coarse grains of quartz, which only cohere very slightly, and easily crumble under pressure. It is quite similar in appearance to the sandstone which occurs on the summit of the rock of Iskardo, differing only in being very much more extensively developed than that is, and in being associated and alternating with the very fine clays resembling those which occupy the lower levels of the valley of Iskardo. The sandstones of Tarkata did not appear to be fossiliferous, nor did I, in the slight examination I was able to give them, discover any shells in the fine clays in this neighbourhood. The general similarity, however, of these deposits to the lacustrine clays of the Iskardo valley, makes it nearly certain that their origin is similar, while the association of the sandstones and the fine clays in the neighbourhood of Tarkata, renders it probable that I am right in assuming the arenaceous beds of the summit of the rock of Iskardo to be lacustrine.
FLOATING ICE.
December, 1847.
Ever since leaving Iskardo, the weather had been very unsettled, but no more snow had fallen. The sky had been pretty generally overcast with light clouds, and during the day the wind had almost invariably blown down the river, generally with great violence, and, especially in the narrowest parts of the valley, in furious gusts, against which it was most laborious to make any progress. The mornings had been always frosty, but the temperature rose in the middle of the day several degrees above 32°. On the 8th of December, a sudden increase of cold seemed to take place, the temperature not rising above the freezing-point. Large cakes of ice, which appeared early on the morning of that day, floating down the river, indicated an evident commencement of very severe weather in the upper part of its course, and the descent of such masses of ice, in cakes of from one to ten feet in diameter, tended very much to lower the temperature of all parts of the river to which they extended. The elevation of Tarkata I found to be 7800 feet above the sea.
The road from Iskardo to Kashmir leaves the valley of the Indus at the junction of the river of Dras, and follows the course of that river almost to its source. The lower part of the valley of Dras is a deep and narrow rocky ravine, bordered by precipices of granite, which are so steep that the bottom of the valley is quite inaccessible. In passing from the Indus into the valley of Dras, the road crosses the granitic spur which separates the two rivers, at an elevation of about 2000 feet above the Indus, ascending to this height very rapidly along a steep spur, which recedes almost in a perpendicular direction from that river. From the shoulder of this ridge, which was elevated probably about 10,000 feet, the course of the Indus was visible for some distance above the junction of the river of Dras. It appeared to be hemmed in very closely by rocky mountain spurs. A good many patches of fine lacustrine clay were in sight, on both banks.
VALLEY OF DRAS.
December, 1847.
From the same ridge, the view up the Dras valley was very remarkable. The river of that name, which formed many deep pools and was partially frozen, ran at the bottom of a deep gorge. On the right bank opposite to where I stood, a sheer precipice rose nearly to a level with my eye. Between the ridge on which I stood and the next in succession up the Dras valley, an open and shallow valley, everywhere strewed with enormous blocks of granite, sloped gently till it approached the brink of the almost perpendicular cliffs which overhang the Dras river. Crossing this open valley, and the low spur beyond it, I encamped at a small village called Ulding Thung, situated at the point of junction of the Dras river, with a considerable tributary descending from the west.
This little village occupies the gentle slope of a hill-side, but I encamped at the lowest part of it, which was a small level plain surrounded by a number of giant boulders, resting on the upper edge of a very steep slope, and evidently, I think, of glacial origin. They were quite angular, and not less than from twenty to thirty feet in length.