Henry H. HoicortJi — Elevation of Eastern Asia. 159 



If we go to the other extremity of the great plateau, namely, 

 where it spreads out into the Desert of Gobi, we cannot read any 

 traveller's report of its barren wastes scattered with salt lakes 

 without coming to the same conclusions about it. Eeclus describes 

 it in his picturesque language : " The Gobi," he says, " like the 

 Sahara, was formerly covered by the waters of the ocean, even on 

 the elevated plateaux, old cliffs may be noticed, the bases of which 

 are worn away by the waves, and long strands of round shingle 

 stretch around the area which was formerly occupied by a now 

 vanished gulf" (The Earth, p. 100). 



It thus appears that the surface of the plateau inclosed by the 

 gi'eat mountain ramparts of Asia bears continuous evidence of being 

 the very recently (geologically speaking), desiccated bed of a sea, 

 that is, bears witness to a very recent and wide upheaval. 



Evidence that great masses of water have passed over the ground 

 quite recently is forthcoming in the sheets of auriferous gravel con- 

 taining the bones of the big mammals which are strewn over the 

 flanks of the Altai in precisely the same way that they are over the 

 Ural mountains, and necessitating the same conclusion ; and the 

 very wide-stretching mantle of shingle which Drew and others 

 describe as covering large parts of the plateau of Ladakh, etc., 

 seems to point the same moral. 



Speaking of the beds in the elevated valleys of the Himalayas, 

 Strachey says: "As in the case of the plain of India, we here, too, 

 have no complete proof of the origin of these great nearly horizontal 

 deposits ; but it seems clear, from the materials of which they are 

 formed, that they must have been laid out by water, either by the 

 sea or by some great inland lake. They are largely composed of 

 boulder deposits, and large boulders are strewn over the surface 

 imbedded on the ground in a manner that seems only explicable as 

 the result of the action of a considerable body of water (Ency. Brit, 

 vol. xi. p. 828). 



Again, the researches of Pere David on the mountains separating 

 China and Mongolia agree with the remarks of Stolizcka about the 

 Kashgar country and of the authors of the Manual of Indian 

 Geology, that the rocks themselves bear testimony to very recent 

 disturbance on a large scale in this area ; and following in the wake 

 of Medlicott and others, Strachey says, " The general conclusion that 

 may be drawn from the facts of structure thus briefly indicated is 

 that the elevation of the Himalaya to its present great height is of 

 compai'atively recent occurrence" (Ency. Brit. vol. xi. p. 828j. 



The same view is maintained by Mr. Lj^dekker in regard to the 

 outliers of the Himalayas, known as the Siwaliks, the upper beds 

 of which belong to Pliocene, if not later times. He says, " In all 

 the Jamu district, at all events, the Siwalik strata are carried up and 

 contorted by the conformable underlying rocks ; it is evident that 

 these older rocks have only been raised at a comparatively recent 

 period to the elevation at which we now find them, and that conse- 

 quently in Siwalik times the whole of the outer belt of the Himalaya 

 must have been much lower than at present." In another paragraph, 



