242 Notes on Moorcroft' s Travels in Ladakh, [No. 148. 



The ruggedness can scarcely bear on this point. The truth seems to 

 be, that all the streams in question have their origin at nearly the 

 same height, but the large ones have long, and the small ones have 

 short courses, in which to find the same level. Thus the Taglakhar 

 and Darbung torrents rise in the neighbourhood of Passes 18,000 feet 

 high, as high perhaps as the remoter sources of the Pitti river, and yet 

 they have to find the level of that river continued in the Sutlej. This 

 sample of equal descent in unequal distances, seems generally applicable. 



Former Lakes.— -The people have a vague tradition that this valley 

 (of the Buspa,) was once a sheet of water. — Gerard, p. 18. 



There can be no reasonable doubt of the former existence of a series 

 of lakes along the present courses of the Sutlej and its principal 

 feeders in the hills. The Sutlej has now indeed attained an equili- 

 brium, and forms one continued rapid from its source to the plains ; 

 but the traces of sheets of standing water are everywhere apparent, 

 in parallel and horizontal deposits of pebbles, earth, and debris gene- 

 rally, which a narrow gorge, or a cleft at one end of these deposits, 

 shew where the obstruction existed. These lakes gradually diminish- 

 ed in size until the lowermost barrier was burst or worn through by 

 the continued action of water, and the bottom of these old pools now 

 form the richest and almost the only cultivated lands in the northern 

 hills. In these hills, the natural disintegration of the rocks scarcely 

 anywhere affords a stratum of soil ; and although I have in some 

 places, near the flat tops of hills, found two feet or more of vegetable 

 earth, yet as no stream of water can be brought to bear on it, this 

 fine mould is useless to the people generally; some of the more in- 

 dustrious, however, carry a little of it away as a manure to their low- 

 situated fields. 



The want of available water is the greatest bar to an extension of 

 cultivation in these cold dry countries, but on this subject, Gerard, p. 

 4, Note, and Moorcroft, Vol. I, p. 270, may be consulted. Captain 

 Hutton's Tour (Jour. As. Soc.J may also be referred to. 



The annexed cut will explain the present evidence of the former 

 existence of lakes in the ravine of the Sutlej and its tributaries. 



Titles. 

 Garpan, fyc. — The garpan of Gardokh Moorcroft, II, 251. 



i. 



