34 GR1ESBACH : GEOLOGY OF THE CENTRAL HIMALAYAS. 



south-east to north-west. These carboniferous beds dip below the 

 trias and rhaetic of the Niti pass range in perfectly normal order 

 (fig. 1 6). I have examined both these ranges carefully in every di- 

 rection, having had the good fortune to be able to re-visit the ground 

 again in 1882, and have found no other locality where the carboniferous 

 boulders could have been derived from. I believe them to be of gla- 

 cial origin ; but even had they been transported by water, they must 

 have been derived from the range south of the Niti pass ridge, and the 

 natural consequence of this supposition is that the drainage (water 

 or Lee) must have flowed northwards once, in order to deposit the 

 palaeozoic boulders on the upturned edges of the rhaetic limestone 

 which forms the Niti pass range. I believe the boulders of the Niti 

 pass, and the north-east slope of the lower Daldakharak, were depo- 

 sited at a time when the Dhauli Ganga had not yet worked back its 

 course through the area north of the Kharbasyia gorge, and when the 

 drainage of that part of 4he Himalayas was flowing in a northern di- 

 rection, belonging in fact to the present Hundes basin. This rever- 

 sion of the drainage I suppose to have been caused chiefly by the 

 folding and wrinkjing process, which has added folds on folds to the 

 mountain system of the Himalayas. That such folding actually con- 

 tinued after the deposition of the young tertiaries of the Hundes basin 

 is clearly shown by the fact that near the edge of the basin, the beds 

 of the tertiaries are everywhere raised up on ' end, as is also the 

 case along the southern margin of the lower hills, which are skirt- 

 ed by the Siwaliks. In stating this supposition, I do not assert that 

 the gigantic folds, which at present form the Northern range of the 

 Central Himalayas, date from post tertiary times ; but I think it highly 

 probable that in the general wrinkling process, which must still be 

 going on at the present time, this Northern range was perhaps one 

 of the later formed flexures, and gradually became a water-parting, 

 at the same time, when that portion of the drainage from the 

 Southern or main range of the Central Himalayas, which is still 

 flowing towards the plains of India, gradually cut backwards through 

 the former water-parting. That the supposition of a still existing 

 ( 34 ) 



