Alluvial and Lacustrine Deposits and Glacial Records of the Upper-Indus Basin

Abstract

Part I. Alluvial Deposits . The tract of country in which occur the deposits of which I propose to give a somewhat detailed though concise account, is that part of the Maharaja of Kashmir's territory which is drained by the Indus. The greater portion of this country has been visited by travellers whose attention has been drawn to the deposits in question, and who have recorded some observations upon them. While considerable light has been thrown by some of these observers, it has seemed to me well both to add my quota and to try to systematize the facts, so as to prevent the confusion likely to arise from mixing, in description, accumulations of various origin, though they may all be classed in one sense as alluvium, and to see what general conclusions can be drawn from all that we have learned. The writers who have told most about the alluvial and lacustrine deposits are Col. H. Strachey, Gen. Cunningham, Dr. Thompson, Major Godwin-Austen, and Dr. Stoliczka. Col. Strachey, whose paper on the Physical Geography of Western Tibet is a wonderful store of accurate and valuable information compressed into a small compass, has given in it a description of the alluvium of the neighbouring basin of the Sutlej, with some reference to the corresponding deposits of the Indus; his conclusions I shall discuss further on. Gen. Cunningham, in his book on Ladākh, has given some notices of lacustrine deposits and of the former extension of lakes, which bear on the subject