Part 12 (1/2)

Throughout the whole course of this very remarkable gorge by which we descended from Giah, the rock continued to be conglomerate, alternating with strata of sandstone and of a very friable slate. The conglomerate was extremely hard, and generally of a dark brown colour.

The matrix, which had often a semi-vitrified appearance, was not less hard than the enclosed stones, which were all rounded and very various in size and composition, jasper rock, granite, and quartz being all seen. The sandstone which accompanied the conglomerate varied much in colour, various shades of red, brown, and green being predominant. It was also extremely hard. These strata, which were highly inclined, often nearly vertical, were in general well marked, in consequence of the beds of hard sandstone and conglomerate being thrown out in relief by the more rapid decay of the soft slates with which they alternated.

The dip was everywhere very variable, and several very distinct sections were displayed, where it was evident that the strata were curved and sinuated. The curves observed were convex below; the strike of the strata was nearly perpendicular to the general direction of the ravine, or from north-west to south-east.

[Sidenote: INDUS VALLEY.

_September, 1847._]

From Ups.h.i.+, our course lay down the Indus valley in a direction west of north. The width of the Indus, which was a rapid stream, varied from thirty or forty to a hundred feet. Platforms of alluvium, almost level-topped, and often attaining a thickness of a hundred feet, were interposed between the river and the mountains, which, still composed of highly inclined strata of conglomerate and its a.s.sociated rocks, advanced in a succession of spurs towards the centre of the valley.

These platforms were quite bare of vegetation, a few tufts of a p.r.i.c.kly _Echinops_ being the only plant worthy of note which I observed. No villages were pa.s.sed till we reached Marsilang, at which we encamped after a journey of about ten miles. Here there was very extensive cultivation on the surface of the platform, on both sides of a deep ravine, cut in the alluvium by a considerable stream, which descended from the west. The plantations of willow and poplar were very luxuriant. The willows were planted in rows, and were frequently pollarded, their twigs being in great demand for baskets and other useful purposes in so treeless a country. When allowed to grow their full size, they spread much, and attain a length of upwards of thirty feet. The cultivated willows of Tibet are mostly European forms; _Salix fragilis_ and _S. alba_ are the most common. The poplars are of two sorts: one a spreading tree with large cordate leaves, which was first seen in Upper Kunawar, and is common in all the Tibetan villages, up to the highest limit of tree cultivation; it is quite identical with _Populus balsamifera_, which I cannot distinguish in the herbarium from _P. laurifolia_, of Ledebour. The other, which I had not before seen in Tibet, was a tall, erect, and slender tree, with much darker foliage and smaller leaves; it seems, so far as my specimens enable me to decide, to be the common black poplar (_P.

nigra_) of Europe.

[Sidenote: MARSILANG.

_September, 1847._]

At Marsilang the Indus is crossed by a good wooden bridge, thirty-four paces in length, which enables its inhabitants to communicate with the large villages and extensive cultivated tracts on the east bank of the river. As soon as we left the cultivated lands of Marsilang, on the morning of the 1st of October, we found ourselves again on a platform of alluvium; but after a few miles we reached another village, with extensive cultivation, and on the latter part of the day's journey pa.s.sed through a succession of villages separated by gradually shorter intervals of unprofitable and barren land. These cultivated tracts were everywhere well irrigated; indeed, every spot, where irrigation was easy of execution, seemed to be under cultivation. Each village had its plantation of poplars and willows, not, however, so plentiful as at Marsilang. The grain had everywhere been cut and housed, the operations of harvest being seemingly quite at an end. The whole of this richly-cultivated district is called Chashut.

Our journey of the 2nd of October was for about six miles through an uninterrupted tract of cultivation, very little elevated above the level of the river, the alluvial platforms being here of inconsiderable thickness. The direction of the valley was also much more westerly, and the mountains on both sides had receded considerably from the river, leaving an open plain of five or six miles in width. Numerous irrigation channels intersected the fields, which gradually, as we proceeded, united one to another, till at last they all combined into one large and deep ca.n.a.l, by which the superfluous waters were conveyed to the Indus. Crossing this ca.n.a.l, we reached the river, which we crossed by a bridge twenty-five paces in length. A few houses, and a small patch of cultivation, lay on the right bank of the river, immediately beyond the bridge, but no extent of fertile country; low spurs of rocky hills descending from the north, close down upon the Indus. After crossing the bridge we turned up a wide and gravelly valley between two of these ridges, the course of which we followed, ascending very gradually among large boulders, strewed over the surface, for about three miles. We then turned abruptly to the left, through a narrow ravine in the low granitic hills by which the valley was on that side bounded. Emerging from this, we entered a quite similar and parallel valley, and obtained our first view of the town of Le, covering the top and slopes of a steep hill by which the valley was apparently terminated, about two miles beyond the point at which we entered it.

[Sidenote: LE.

_September, 1847._]

Le, the capital of the province of Ladak, and the most important place, and only town, of Western Tibet, is situated about three miles from the Indus, in the upper part of an open valley, which rises gradually as it recedes from the river, so that the town is rather more than 1200 feet above its level, or about 11,800 feet above the sea. The town occupies the slope, and surrounds the base of a low spur, on the left or east side of the valley, while the centre and right side are occupied by extensive tracts of cultivation, the fields rising in terraces one above another, and watered by little rills drawn from a stream which descends in the centre of the valley. The aspect of the town, which is very peculiar, is faithfully represented in the frontispiece to the second volume of Moorcroft's Travels, from a sketch by Mr. Trebeck.

In the neighbourhood of the town there are several small enclosures, planted with poplar and willow trees, in one of which we pitched our tents. These plantations were all young, a very fine garden of old trees having been, it was said, destroyed at the time of the Sikh invasion. The governor of Ladak, a deputy of Maharaja Gulab Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, to whom the rule of Ladak has devolved as a dependency of the latter country, resides in the town; but the detachment of troops, amounting to about 150 men, who form the military garrison of the place, occupy a small square fort on the west side of the valley, about a mile from the town of Le.

The peculiarities of the Buddhist religion, as practised in Tibet, which are everywhere conspicuous in all parts of Ladak, are especially remarkable in the capital. The princ.i.p.al monasteries in the neighbourhood of Le are at some distance from the town in the vicinity of villages both up and down the Indus; but religious edifices, of the many kinds which are everywhere so common in Tibet, are seen all round Le in great numbers. Along the road by which we approached the town, there is a very long building, of the kind called _Mane_, extending for more than half a mile. It consists of two parallel walls, twelve or fifteen feet apart, and nearly six feet high, the intervals between which are filled up with stones and rubbish, and the whole covered with a sloping roof, which rises at a gentle angle to the central ridge, midway between the two walls. On the roof are laid large slabs of slate, every one of which is covered with Tibetan letters, or more rarely with a rude drawing of a temple. The words on these stones are (I believe, invariably) a repet.i.tion of the mystical Buddhist prayer, from one of the words of which these curious, and apparently useless, erections take their name. The Mane seems one of the most indispensable accompaniments of a Tibetan village, and they may occasionally be seen even in desert tracts; so that the amount of labour which has been expended in their construction must have been very great, some of the largest containing many millions of repet.i.tions of the words _Om Mane Padme Hom_. In the smaller villages they are often very inferior in size, sometimes not more than twenty or thirty feet in length, and three feet high. Every traveller has constant occasion to notice that in pa.s.sing these walls the Tibetans always leave them on the right hand, considering it both wrong and unlucky to do otherwise; those proceeding in contrary directions therefore take opposite sides.

[Sidenote: RELIGIOUS EDIFICES OF TIBET.

_September, 1847._]

Equally conspicuous in the environs of Le are the urn-like buildings, called Chokten or Chosten, which are, I believe, erected over the ashes of Lamas, or priests, and are, therefore, in a country where a third or fourth part of the male population adopt a monastic life, particularly abundant. Long rows of these, consisting of twenty or more urns of various sizes, may often be seen in conspicuous places above the villages, forming, from the brilliant whitewash with which they are covered when new, very prominent objects. Many of those near Le are of large size, and ornamented with rude paintings of dragons and other mythological animals of uncouth form.

The religion of Tibet, from the remarkable nature of its inst.i.tutions and ceremonies, has of late years attracted much attention; but as, from the hurried nature of my journey, I had no opportunity of acquiring any information regarding it which has not already been made public, it is not necessary for me to dwell upon it at any length.

Throughout the whole of Western Tibet, the monasteries are very poor, in comparison with those in the neighbourhood of La.s.sa, of which we read such gorgeous descriptions; all their wealth in silver and gold having been plundered by the Sikhs, during their short possession of the country as far east as Garu and Taklakhar. Still the number of Lamas does not seem to have much diminished, though they are more dependent upon the cultivation of the soil than in Eastern Tibet, where some of the monasteries are said to contain thousands of priests.

[Sidenote: LE.

_September, 1847._]

The town of Le is said to contain about 3000 inhabitants. Many of the houses are very high, the former residence of the king containing seven stories. They are usually built of unburnt brick, formed from the fine lacustrine clay of the neighbourhood. The Sikh Thannadar has lately built for himself a house of stone, but he found it necessary to bring lime from Nubra, a distance of nearly forty miles, none being procurable so near in the valley of the Indus. The timber used in the construction of the houses is all poplar or willow, both of which are found to last a very long time in the arid climate of Tibet. The beams are laid perhaps two feet apart, and covered sometimes with small planking, but more generally with brushwood, over which is laid a thick coating of clay, so as to form a flat roof, to which there is usually access by a small stair or ladder.

The mountain ranges which bound the valley in which the town of Le is situated, though not lofty, are very generally rocky and inaccessible.

They consist partly of distinctly stratified gneiss, but princ.i.p.ally of a fine white granite, which decays with great rapidity, and contains many irregular nodules of an iron grey colour, much finer in the grain than the rest. The width of the fertile plain of Chashut, over which I made the last two marches down the Indus, had prevented me from ascertaining the nature of the rocks on the mountains to the left, so that I cannot fix the exact point where the granitic eruption comes in contact with the slates and conglomerates of the Giah ravine.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Turner's Tibet, p. 406.

[14] Phil. Tr. 1787, p. 297.