Kashmir by Sir Younghusband Francis Edward (libby ebook reader txt) 📖
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Mr. Hayden further concludes that the exceptional height of these great peaks is due to their being composed of granite, for either the superior power of the granite to resist the atmospheric forces tending to their degradation has caused them to stand as isolated masses above surrounding areas of more easily eroded rocks, or they are areas of special elevation.
LAKE SHISHA NAG, LIDAR VALLEY
Now it is found that the axes of the great mountain ranges are also composed of granite, and it seems probable that special elevating forces have been at work to raise certain parts of their ranges above the general level of the whole. And when once such elevation has been brought about, the disparity between the higher peaks and the intervening less elevated area would undoubtedly be intensified by the destructive forces at work, for the mantle of snow and ice, while slowly carrying on its work of abrasion, would serve as a protection for the peaks against the disintegrating forces of the atmosphere, while the lower unprotected areas would be more rapidly eroded.
So argues Mr. Hayden, who further demonstrates that when, during the development of the Himalayas as a mighty mountain range vast masses of granite welled up from below, forcing their way through and lifting up the pre-existing rocks superimposed upon them, it is probable that, owing to dissimilarity of composition and to structural weaknesses in certain portions of the earth's crust, movement was more intense at some points than at others, and that the granite was raised into more or less dome-like masses standing above the general level of the growing range, and subsequently carved by the process of erosion into clusters of peaks.
The great peaks being thus of intrusive origin, the question naturally arises whether they are still being intruded upward; whether those great forces at work beneath the surface of the earth are still impelling them upward; and if so, whether they are being forced upward more rapidly than the atmospheric forces are wearing down their summits. From the geological standpoint Mr. Hayden says that it is not at present possible to say whether the elevatory movement is still in progress, but he adds that many phenomena observable in the Himalayas lead us to infer that local elevation has until quite recently been operative, and the numerous earthquakes still occurring with such frequency and violence forcibly remind us that the Himalayas have by no means reached a period of even comparative rest. The surveyor can as yet give us no more certain answer. Colonel Burrard says the original observations of the great peaks made between 1850 and 1860 were not sufficiently prolonged at any one station to enable us to rely with certainty on the values of the height then obtained. When a slow variation in height has to be determined it is better to carry out a long series of observations from one station only, rather than to take a number of observations from different stations, as is necessary and as was done in determining the absolute height of peaks. But in 1905 the Survey of India commenced a series of observations from one station, and it is proposed to observe the heights of several peaks for some years and at different seasons in each year. Then if a reliable series of results be once obtained, a similar set of observations can be repeated at a subsequent date, and any actual change of height that has occurred in the interval may be discovered.
DISTANT VIEW OF NANGA PARBAT FROM THE KAMRI PASS
Until these observations are made we cannot say for certain whether the great peaks are still rising.
The Mountain Ranges
So far we have considered the isolated peaks rather than the ranges themselves. It remains to study these latter. All of them are popularly regarded as forming part of the "Himalayas." But Himalaya—pronounced with the stress on the second syllable—simply means the "abode of snow"; and geographers have had to define the separate ranges into which this great Himalayan region is divided. The name of the Great Himalaya is consequently reserved for the supreme range which extends from the western borders of China, carries the great peaks, Mount Everest and Kinchinjunga, and runs through Kumaon and Kashmir to Nanga Parbat, and possibly farther. This is the culminating range of the earth's surface. The range to the north, on which stands K2 and some satellite peaks of 26,000 feet, is neither so long nor has it quite such lofty peaks. It is known as the Karakoram range because a pass called the Karakoram Pass crosses it. But a pass called the Mustagh also crosses it, and Mustagh means Ice Mountain, whereas Karakoram means black gravel. Mustagh, therefore, appears to me a much more appropriate name for this gigantic range of ice-clad mountains. It so happens that I am the only European who has crossed both passes. Each of them is close upon 19,000 feet in altitude, but the Karakoram, very curiously, has in summer no snow upon it, and the route leads over black gravel. It is a better known pass than the former, and, consequently, the name of black gravel got the start, and now this superb range of mountains is doomed for all time to suffer from this absurd nomenclature.
MOUNT KOLAHOI, LIDAR VALLEY
The range, however, lies far at the back of Kashmir, and it is not so much with it as with the true Himalaya range that we are here concerned. The mountain ranges which encircle the valley of Kashmir are the final prolongations of that mighty range which runs from the borders of Burma thirteen hundred miles away, and bifurcating at the Sutlej River, forms with its subsidiary spurs the cradle in which the Kashmir valley is set.
The southern branch of this bifurcation is known as the Pir Panjal range, and is that which bounds Kashmir on the south. It is the largest of all the lesser Himalayan ranges, and even at its extremity in Kashmir it carries many peaks exceeding 15,000 feet; the Tatakuti Peak, 30 miles south-west of Srinagar, 15,524 feet in height, being the most conspicuous.
The northern branch of the bifurcation at the Sutlej River of the great Himalayan range culminates in the Nun Kun peaks (23,410 feet and 23,250 feet), which stand conspicuously 3000 feet above the general crest of the range, and can be seen on clear days from Gulmarg. From near them, not far from the Zoji-la, an oblique range branches from the great Himalayan range, and constitutes the parting between the Jhelum River and the Kishenganga, the latter river draining the angle formed by the bifurcation. The height of this North Kashmir range, as Colonel Burrard calls it, is greatest near the point of bifurcation, one of its peaks, Haramokh (16,890 feet), reaching above the snow-line, and being the most conspicuous object which meets the eye of a traveller entering the valley from the south. Farther westward the range ramifies and declines.
The main line of the great range of the Himalayas has meanwhile continued from the remarkable depression at the Zoji Pass along by the Kamri Pass, to the immense mountain buttress of Nanga Parbat which, overhanging the deep defiles of the Indus, seems to form a fitting end to the mighty range which started on the confines of China. But there are great mountains beyond the Indus also, and whether these form a continuation of the great Himalayan axis which the river Indus would in that case have merely cut through in the gorges below Nanga Parbat, or whether the mountains west of the Indus are part of a separate range, we shall not know till these latter have been geologically examined.
CHAPTER XIVTHE STORY OF THE MOUNTAINS
How these peaks and mountain ranges arose is a fascinating and impressive study. It has been made by Mr. Hayden, who, in the fourth part of the scientific memoir quoted in the previous chapter, has compiled their history from his own personal investigations and the accounts of his fellow-observers in the Geological Survey of India. And surely a scientific man could have no more inspiring task than the unravelling of the past history of the mighty Himalaya. Here we have clue after clue traced down, the meaning of each extracted, and the broad general outline of the mountain's story told in all its grand impressiveness, till one sees the earth pulsating like a living being, rising and subsiding, and rising again, now sinking inward till the sea flows over the depression, then rising into continental areas, anon subsiding again beneath the waters, and finally, under titanic lateral pressure and crustal compression, corrugating into mighty folds, while vast masses of granite well up from below, force their way through, lift up the pre-existing rocks and toss themselves upward into the final climax of the great peaks which distinguish the Himalaya from every other range of mountains in the world.
For millions of years a perpetual struggle has been going on between the inherent earth forces pressing upward and the opposing forces of denudation wearing away the surface. Sometimes the internal forces are in commotion, or the contracting crust of the earth finds some weak spot and crumples upward, and the mountains win. A period of internal quiescence follows, and the rain and snow, the frost and heat, gain the victory, and wear down the proudest mountains—as they have worn away the snowy glacier mountains which once stood in Rajputana.
RAMPUR, JHELUM VALLEY ROAD
Of all this wonderful past the mountains themselves bear irrefutable evidence. Near Rampur, on the road into Kashmir, are bold cliffs of limestone, a rock which is merely the accumulation of the relics of generations of minute marine shell-fishes. These cliffs, now upturned to almost the perpendicular, must once have lain flat beneath the surface of the ocean. High up in the Sind valley, embedded in the rocks, are fossil oysters, showing that they too must once have lain beneath the sea. More telling still at Zewan, a few miles east of Srinagar, are fossils of land plants immediately below strata of rocks containing fossils of marine animals and plants, from which may be concluded that the land subsided under the sea, and was afterwards thrust up again. Again, an examination of the rocks on the Takht-i-Suliman shows that they are merely dried lava, and must have had a volcanic origin—perhaps beneath the sea. And an investigation of the rocks on the flanks of Nanga Parbat has shown that they are of granite which must have been intruded from the interior of the earth.
Everywhere there is evidence that even K2 and Nanga Parbat lay beneath the sea, and that where now are mountains once rolled the ocean; that some once lay in soft, flat layers of mud or sand, or plant and shell deposit on the ocean bottom, while others, as the ocean bottom was upraised above the waters, were obtruded through them; and that everywhere there has been an immense pressing and crumpling of the earth's crust—a rising and subsiding, a throbbing and pulsation, which at one time has brought Kashmir in direct contact by land with Madagascar and South Africa, and at another has brought it into through communication by sea with both America and Europe; and which, finally, has projected it upward thousands of feet into the air. The evidence,
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