159 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
above large patches lay in shady places, but no continuous snow- 
beds. To the north a small stream, commencing just below the pass, 
could be traced for about half a mile, at the end of which distance it 
disappeared among hills, by which the view is limited, Along this 
small stream I was informed the road to Yarkund runs, but through an 
absolutely desert country; so that I did not consider it advisable to 
proceed any further. I might, no doubt, have advanced several days' 
journey, but at the edge of the habitable country is a Chinese post, and 
as they had, probably, advice of my coming, they might have sent a 
party to meet and stop me; at all events, I should have been arrested 
at the edge of the interesting country, up to which point I could ex- 
pect no novelty, either botanical or geographical. Returning by the 
way I came, I reached Nubra on the 2nd of September. 
The natives of Ladakh and Nubra have no name for the extensive 
range of snowy mountains which run from E. S. E. to W. N. W., and 
their names are mostly confined to localities (towns or encamping 
places) ; even rivers have no general appellations. The name Karakoram 
is confined to the range north of the table-land, and in particular to the 
pass to which I ascended. This range, which probably nowhere exceeds 
20,000 or 21,000 feet, seems an offset from the snowy range twenty 
or thirty miles further west. It is curious that, though much lower 
than the range further south, it is in fact the dividing range between 
the central or Yarkund basin and the basin of the Indus, several 
streams breaking through the snowy mountains to get to the Indus. 
Darwin, I recollect, observed a similar circumstance in the two parallel 
chains of the Andes. The table-land is, so far as I recollect, the most 
elevated plain in the world. It is highest to the west, but must. 
there dip suddenly to the valley, or rather ravine, of the stream 
which I had ascended, which runs between it and the snowy range. 
To the east it sinks very gently, almost imperceptibly, and is bounded 
by low mountains five or six miles off. The average elevation of the 
plain is probably about 17,500 feet; d a low range of hills which 
occupy its north border before the descent to the Shayok, may attain a 
height of 18,000. Its surface is covered with small waterworn and 
angular fragments of all the surrounding rocks ; and its substance 
seems to consist of a hardened calcareous clay, of which masses also 
occurred rolled on the surface. (The rock, where visible, is limestone.) 
Altogether, the general features at once suggested the idea of the bed 
