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Show 80 STEPPES AND DESERTS. of Sirinagur (Carl von Hugel, Kaschmir, bd. ii. s. 196)-is not situated, as is often supposed, upon the ridge of the Himalaya, but is a true cauldron-shaped valley (Kesselthal, Caldera) on the southern declivi~y of those mountains. On the south-west, where the ram part-like elevations of the Pir Panjal separates it from the Punjaub, the snow-covered summits are crowned, according to Vigne, with formations of basalt and amygdaloid. The latter formation has received from the natives the characteristic name of "schischak deyu," marked by the devil's small-pox. (Vigne, Travels in Kashmeer, 1842, vol. i. pp. 237-293.) The beauty of its vegetation has from the earliest times been very differently described, according as the visitor came from the rich and luxuriant vegetation of India, or from the northern regions of Turkestan, Samarcand, and Ferghana. It is also only very recently that clearer views have been obtained respecting the elevation of Thibet; the level of the plateau having long been most uncritically confounded with the summits which rise from it. Thibet occupies the interval between the two great chains of the Himalaya and the Kuen-liin, forming the raised ground of the valley between them. It is divided from east to west, both by the natives and by Chinese geographers, into three portions. Upper Thibet, with its capital city H'lassa, probably 1500 toises (9590 English feet) above the level of the sea j.:_l\fiddle Thibet, with the town of Leh or Ladak (1563 toises, or 9995 English feet) j- and Little Thibet, or Baltistan, called the Thibet of Apricots, (Sari Boutan,) in which are situated Iskardo (985 toises, or '6300 English feet), Gilgit, and south of Iskardo but on the left bank of the Indus, the plateau of Deotsuh, measured by Vigne, and found to be 1873 toises, or 11,977 English feet. On examining all the notices that we possess respecting the three Thibets, (and which will have received in the present year a rich augmentation by the boundary expedition under the auspices of the governor-general, Lord Dalhousie,) we soon become convinced that the region between the Himalaya and the Kuen-liin is no unbroken plain or table land, but that it is intersected by mountain groups, undoubtedly belonging to wholly distinct systems of elevation. 1'here are, properly speaking, very few plains; the most considerable are those between Gertop, Daba, Schang-thung (Shepherd's Plain), the native country of the |
