Vol. 56.] THE GEOLOGY OF GILGIT. 361 



form the water-parting between Central Asia and India, this 

 tendency of the principal rivers of Gilgit to run across the strike 

 of the rocks appears to imply that the direction of the main 

 drainage of the country was determined before, or at the com- 

 mencement of, the last series of earth-movements that threw the 

 strata into a series of east-and-west folds, and compressed them 

 together until they assumed a monoclinal and vertical dip. It 

 also shows that the process of folding and compression was slow and 

 gradual, and that it did not exceed the rate at which the river- 

 beds were then being eroded. 



In the topographical part of this paper I restricted myself to- 

 a bare description of the numerous outcrops of limestone 

 which occur in the Gilgit area. I desire now to explain my views 

 regarding their age. 



No fossils have been found in the Gilgit limestones, and I doubt 

 whether any will reward those who search for them. The profuse 

 intrusion of granite and other igneous rocks in this area, and the 

 profound alteration of the sedimentary rocks caused by their contact- 

 action, must have destroyed all the fossils. In the neighbouring 

 district of Kashmir, however, the great conformable series of lime- 

 stones known to Himalayan geologists as the Carbo-Triassic Series 

 are abundantly fossiliferous, and the Triassic beds can there be 

 separated from the underlying Carboniferous Limestones. 



The Carboniferous Limestones of Kashmir are shown in the map 

 appended to Mr. E. Lydekker's paper in the Eecords of the 

 Geological Survey of India, vol. xiv (1881) p. 56, and in that 

 attached to his Memoir on the Geology of Kashmir 1 a little to 

 the north of Shigar (see sketch-map, p. 344) in contact with the 

 Triassic Series. The two outcrops there vary from 5 to 15 miles 

 in thickness. In the map published with the 'Manual of the 

 Geology of India ' 2nd ed. (1893), the united outcrop is coloured 

 4 Carboniferous to Trias.' Its course is shown to be from Shigar to 

 the east of Askole, and thence along the western side of the Biafo 

 Glacier towards the end of the Hispar Glacier. 



Prof. Bonney & Miss Raisin's description of Sir Martin Conway's 

 specimens enable me to connect the Biafo-Glacier outcrop with the 

 1 stinkstones ' of the Hunza Valley in Gilgit. I leave out of count 

 Sir Martin Conway's specimens from the Biafo Valley, the Baltoro 

 Glacier, and the Golden Throne, though they are interesting and 

 show the extension of the Askole-Biafo outcrop into Kashmir on an 

 east-and-west strike. Other exposures are of more importance to 

 my present purpose. Prof. Bonney describes specimens found in 

 situ between the Hispar Glacier and Tashot on the Hunza Eiver r 

 namely, limestone-breccia along the Shallihuru Glacier (one of the 

 affluents of a river flowing from Hispar to Nagar) ; also crystalline 

 limestones in situ on the Eash ridge, and in the Samaiyar Valley 

 south of Kagar. 



Two or three beds of marble, 20 feet thick, which are said 

 to occur between Tashot and Fakkar are undoubtedly the eastern 



1 Mem. Geol. Surv. Ind. vol. xxii (1883). 



