28 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[voL. XIII. 
slates and other rocks are continued about as far as the village of Dandal. In 
this distidct, these rocks are frequently jaspideous like those on the road from Dras 
to Tilel (Tilail) described in my above-quoted paper, and they often acquire a 
black “ river-glazing,” while they disintegrate into a dark and heavy iron-sand. 
Occasional beds of the true slates are highly ferruginous and weather to a 
rusty-red color : there also sometimes occur thin beds of a coarse conglomerate 
i-esembling that found among the slates of the Pir Panjal, the occurrence of 
which confirms the identity of the rocks of the two districts: near Dras the 
rock is like some of the trappoid rocks of Kashmir. 
Still following the course of the Dras river, we find, below Dandal, the rocks 
gradually assuming a hornblendic character, and not unfrequently containing 
crystals of pure hornblende of a large size. Near the halting place of Tashgiim, 
the strata are throrvn into several small anticlinals, the lowest exposed beds 
consisting of a dark-colored syenitic gneiss,' while the higher beds consist of the 
Dras slaty rocks : from the latter to the former, there is a complete and imper¬ 
ceptible passage through the above-mentioned hornblendic rocks, so that I come 
to the conclusion that the lower part of the slate-series has here been altered 
into gneiss. 
From Tashgam to near the junction of the Dras with the Sliingo-Shigar 
river we have alternations of small gneiss anticlinals overlaid by slaty rocks. 
Some of the latter closely resemble in their mineralogical characters the massive 
bluish rocks of the Panjal series, which occur at and near Shi'sha-Nag in 
Kashmir,'' while others are like the ferruginous slate rocks of Dras. 
Near the junction of the two rivers mentioned above, we come upon a massive 
light-colored .syenitic gneiss (syenitoidite) which seems to undeidie conformably 
the transition rocks. 
Another ridge of the same (generally syenitic) gneiss occurs immediately to 
the north of Dras, apparently underlying the slates of Dras on the one side, and 
the transitional rocks of Tashgam on the other. I have not traced these rocks far 
to the north-west of the Ladak road, but I have already mentioned'^ that gneiss 
pebbles occur in the Burzil river on the Kashmir and Astor road; and General 
tlunningham' also states that the table-land of Deosai or Deotsu (to the north¬ 
west of my map), consists principally of granite, by which he doubtless means 
the same gneiss : there is, therefore, every probability that a continuous band of 
these crystallines extends to the north-west of Dras and Karg-il. The eastward 
extension of this Deosai and Dras gneiss will be described below. 
The gneiss anticlinals near Tashgam are probably the highest bods of the main 
gneiss ridges, and are frequently dark colored; but as the main mass of the 
rocks between the two ridges of gneiss are the same as the slates of Dras, they 
have been colored of the same tint in the map. We shall, however, subsequently 
’ The whole of the north-western Himalayan gneiss which I have seen, whether hornblendic or 
micaceous, is granitic in structure, and never distinctly foliated. The hornblendic variety may be 
termed “ syenitoidite,” and the micaceous “ grauitoidite.” 
* liec. Geol. Surv. India, Vol. XI, p. 't-I.. 
’ Rec. Geol. Surv India, Vol. XII, p. 2.t. 
’ " Ladali,” p. 57. 
