18G7] the Western Himalaya and Afyhan Mountains. Ill 



could have been uplifted from under the sea to an elevation of 15,000 

 feet," without losing its horizontality, whilst not only the beds on 

 which the " true sea-bottom" rested, but the probable contemporaneous 

 beds of the Sewaliks (according to Captain Strachey's hypothesis only,) 

 are dipping N. E. at a high-angle. Captain H. Strachey describes 

 the same bed, where it extends into Ladak, as old alluvium, and men- 

 tions its containing fossil bones of extinct mammals, Captain God- 

 win Austen calls these beds, in Ladak, Rodok and Skardo, a fluviatile 

 deposit. The bed is not limited to the belt of country situated 

 between the Ser and Mer (Snowy Peak Range) chain and the Kailas 

 chain. It is well developed in Rodok, near the Pang Chong Lake 

 and up to the foot of the Korakoram chain, and it is very probable 

 that the great Desert of Aksai Chin is a similar bed. I have said, in 

 another place, that 1 believe these horizontal beds to be identical to 

 the Ragzaier or elevated plateaux of the Afghan mountains. How 

 were they formed ? 



In order to answer this question, let us consider what was the 

 physical topography of the Himalayas soon after their final upheaval. 

 There was not much difference in the configuration of the great ocean 

 between the tropics ; if we are to believe the geologists who have 

 studied the Andes, these mountains had not yet appeared ; the great 

 plains of Africa, Arabia, Persia and India, were still under water ; the 

 mountains of the Indian peninsula may have appeared (and did pro- 

 bably appear at the time of the Himalaya's last upheaval) but were 

 separated from the Himalaya by a considerable sheet of water ; the 

 great inland sea now represented by the desert of Gobi was not yet 

 dry, — in short, there was little cause to diminish the humidity of the 

 winds which blew from the south, and there was nothing to change 

 their old direction. But the Himalayan and Afghan mountains 

 were very different from what they had been. Instead of low 

 ranges with volcanic peaks which did not probably soar above 5,000 or 

 6000 feet, we have now an immense wall, some hundred miles broad 

 and 25,000 feet high, with deep longitudinal valleys offering no 

 exit and much embarrassed by detached rocks and debris. The 

 humidity of the winds which produced the tremendous rains of the 

 Miocene period was now deposited as snow. Huge glaciers appeared 

 and filled the longitudinal valleys, and the rivers which ran from them 



