Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/228

24 basin contained a vast lake with swampy grassy margins, long subsequent to the time when the higher deposits were settling down in the first deep lake. The eye of a geologist is not needed to trace these past conditions and changes; there are the shells, there are the crumbling stems of the plants and the fragments of wood, not in one stratum only, but first one, covered by three or four feet of sand and pebbles, then another. This succession can he traced over large areas throughout the lower lacustrine deposit, wherever it is cut through by the present drainage lines of the valley, and can be best seen from Kipchun across the valley to Kuardo, and thence up the Shigar River, near the village of that name—everywhere at a uniform level. The temperature of this region, too, has undergone great changes ever since the period of the lower lacustrine deposit. At the village of Kipchun the terminal moraine of a great glacier from the gorge above juts out a full quarter of a mile into the plain, with its great blocks, just as the ice-mass threw them off. This moraine rests on the deposit of valley sand, whilst the lacustrine beds of Kuardo are hundreds of feet above. In this gorge and then some eight miles higher up there is now only a frozen snow-bed.

Ever subject to the great cataclysms of the Indus and its tributaries, more especially from the side of the Nubra and Shigar, with their glacial sources, the plain of Skardo has undergone changes even within the memory of man. The waters from many sources rush in here and spread themselves over the plain, and any obstruction in the narrow' gorge towards Ronyūl retains them. This happened in 1841, when a great flood from the Nubra valley did irreparable mischief. At that time the plain opposite the village of Kuardo was cultivated and well wooded—the site of two or three villages—these the flood added to the spoil from above. At Komăra, where the river narrows, the whole was arrested, forming a tangled mass, which caused the waters to rise and remain pent up for nine days over the plain of Skardo. With what terrible effect the body of water which had thus accumulated burst its barrier is still remembered at Attock, where hundreds of men and women, the tents and cattle of the camp of Golab Singh, were swept into the Indus.

From Shigări the road to the ferry over the Indus at Kapashna is across sandy flats, which stretch as far as the village of Hoto. In many places sand-dunes, with their steep slopes to the east, show the prevailing winds to be down the valley.

A short distance above the spot where the boat leaves the Skardo shore the muddy waters of the Shigar River come sweeping down, forming strong eddies and even considerable waves when both rivers are high. The sandbanks are continually shifting, and our boat was constantly aground; but by hauling and pushing, the