300 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS— ASIA. [May 24, 1858. 
As a resultant of the numerous surveys and travels of our coun- 
trymen who have explored northwards from Hindostan, I may 
remind you that the gigantic peaks which enclose the lofty plateau 
of Tibet, and separate India from Turkistan, have generally been 
considered by British geographers to constitute one vast mass, or 
sea of mountains.* They were indeed so spoken of when I had the 
honour of delivering our Gold Medal to Henry Strachey, one of the 
best surveyors of large parts of this rugged region. Concentrated 
upon the west, in a knot or group, at and around the Hindu Kush, 
these mountains expand thence to the east and south in fan shape, 
their southern portion, the Himalaya, being the loftiest elevations in 
the world, and forming the northern boundary of India. Farther 
to the north, and beyond the plateau of Tibet, comes another band of 
parallel altitudes, which, also proceeding south-eastwards from the 
lofty western knot, is known near that meridian as the Muztagh, 
and acquires, a little farther to the east, the synonym of Karakorum. 
This last range, which, still farther to the east, is the Kailas of 
British topographers (adopted from the Hindu mythology), has for 
some years been marked on maps as the watershed of the mountain 
region which separates the drainage of India from that of Turkistan 
and China.t It throws off to the south the Indus, Sutlej, and 
Brahmaputra ; the two first, after wandering westwards, and 
the last eastwards, in the plateau of Tibet, escape southwards 
through gorges of the mighty Himalaya, whilst to the north it 
sends off minor streams, the western ones of which, from whatever 
authority derived, have been for some years laid down on maps as 
descending from these mountains into the north-western low country 
of Yarkand .J 
In alluding to this axis or waterparting, it is a fact that it has not 
been traversed by any European proceeding northwards from India, 
though I specially invited your attention to that adventurous journey 
of Dr. Thomson when he ascended to the summit of the Karakorum 
* See Phys. Geography — Western Tibet; Journ. R. Geograph. Soc., vol. xxiii. p. 1 . 
f Called “ Thsoung-Ling ” mountains in St. Martin’s map, accompanying 
Julien’s Travels of Hiuen-Thsang. 
X See Map accompanying Hiigel’s * Travels in Kashmir,’ prepared by Walker 
(small general part thereof), and Arrowsmith’s General Map of Asia, 1841 ; also the 
Map accompanying the Travels of Moorcroft and Trebeck, published 1841— some 
of the materials for the northward drainage from the Karakorum having been 
doubtless those collected by Mir Izzet Ullah, the remarkable servant and avant- 
courier of Moorcroft, whose travels beyond the Himalaya, through Tibet to 
Yarkand, and thence by Samarcand to Bokhara, &c., were translated from the 
Hindu by Professor H. Wilson in the Calcutta Oriental Quarterly Magazine of 
1825, and republished by the Royal Asiatic Society. 
