284 CLIMATIC CONDITIONS OF THE GLACIAL I':POCH. 



and a synoptic map of the region has been published by him, compiled from 

 the work of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. From this map an excellent 

 idea can be obtained of the way in which the height and position of the vari- 

 ous groups of ranges cause these to be more or less covered with snow and 

 ice-fields. The great plain of the Punjab, which lies at the base of this por- 

 tion of the Himalayan ranges, is never snowed upon, its mean temperature 

 being very high. It is not vmtil an elevation of some 4,000 feet is attained 

 that snow falls, even in the coldest month of the year. At an elevation of 

 6,000 or 8,000 feet the precipitation in the form of snow is considerable in 

 quantity, but it hardly remains longer than a few hours, except in the very 

 highest portions of that belt. 



Proceeding towards the interior of the range, and having risen on to the 

 Panjal Mountains, which border the Valley of Kashmir on the south, and of 

 which the dominating peaks are from 15,000 to 15,500 feet in elevation, we 

 find still no glaciers ; but a little farther to the northwest, where there are 

 points reaching 17,000 feet, small ice masses do exist. In the ranges which 

 lie next farther north, and form the water-shed between tlie Jhelam and 

 Shayok on one side and the Indus on the other, there are numerous and 

 large glaciers, beginning on the northwest with those developed on the 

 flanks of Nanga-Parbat, which is neai'ly 27,000 feet in height. In the higher 

 portion of this group, in which there are peaks of from 21,000 to 22,000 feet 

 in elevation, there are extensive snow-fields and ice-flows. Much larger 

 ones, however, occur in the series of elevations forming the Turkestan water- 

 shed, where are peaks second only to Gaurisankar itself — among them the 

 " K^ " of the Trigonometrical Survey, 28,265 feet in height. Here, as Mr. 

 Drew remarks, " the mountains are the most lofty, and the glaciers they 

 give rise to the largest, in the world." One of the grandest of these is at 

 the head of the Basha River, its terminus being at Arandu, between 10,000 

 and 11,000 feet in elevation. This glacier is over thirty miles in length, its 

 lower part, for a distance of twenty or twenty-five miles, being about a mile 

 and a half in width; above this — for some distance at least — it is still wider. 

 A marked feature of this glacier seems to be its very small inclination; along 

 a large portion of its course it has an angle of slope of not over 1^° or 2°.* 



At the head of the Braldu valley, an easterly tributary of the Shigar, is 

 one of the largest known glaciers — that of Baltoro. This is said by the 



* Tlie Jummoo and Kashmir Temtories. A Geographical Account. By Frederick Drew, London, 1875, 

 pp. 366, 367. 



