1 8 As. Jour. N.S.,
2 Sept. Dec. 1835,
3 p.178, Golaum
4 Hyder Khan, Acc.
5 of Moorcroft’s
6 , Journey.
7 9 As. Res. xviii.
8 256, Obs. on Spiti. .
9 4 LADAKH.
10 fuel is excessively scarce, they will, probably, continue for ever
11 valueless, unless coal should be brought to light in quantities
12 sufficient fer their extensive reduction. Sulphur may be obtained
13 in many places, and soda is abundant. Borax,® which is here an
14 article of commerce, does not appear to be a native product, but
15 to be procured by means of barter, from Chinese Tartary or Great
16 Tibet.
17 The climate is characterized by cold and excessive aridity.
18 The snow-line, or lowest limit at which snow is perpetual, is so
19 unusually high in Spiti and Rupshu, at the south-eastern ex-
20 tremity of Ladakh, as to shew the utter futility of attempting to
21 theorize respecting the so-called isothermal lines, in the present
22 scanty and imperfect state of our information as to the data from
23 which they should be determined. Gerard observes respecting
24 Spiti, in lat. 32°,—‘* The marginal limit of the snow, which
25 upon the sides of Chimborazo occurs at fifteen thousand seven
26 hundred feet, is scarcely permanent in Thibet at nineteen thou-
27 sand, and upon the southward aspect has no well-defined boun-
28 dary at twenty-one thousand feet ;” and one summit, twenty-
29 two thousand feet high, was seen by him to be free of snow on
30 the last day in August. This absence of snow probably results
31 in part from the very small quantity of moisture kept suspended in
32 the highly rarefied atmosphere, in part from the intense heat of the
33 direct rays of the sun, the latter cause being in some degree de-
34 pendant on the former. ‘‘ Wherever we go,” observes Gerard, “we
35 find the sun’s rays oppressive.” In one instance, in the beginning
36 of September, at an elevation of fifteen thousand five hundred feet,
37 a thermometer, resting upon the rocks, marked 158°; in another,
38 at fourteen thousand five hundred feet, the instrument, placed on
39 sand, marked 130° ; and in a small tent, at an elevation of thir-
40 teen thousand, it indicated 110°. These phenomena Gerrard at-
41 tributes to the rarefaction and tenuity of the atmosphere, from ele-
42 vation, and the absence of moisture,—circumstances which allow
43 of such immediate radiation of heat, that at the same moment there
44 will be a difference of more than a hundred degrees between places
45 only a few hundred yards asunder, occasioned by the one receiving
46 and the other being excluded from the direct rays of the sun. He
47 justly adds, “‘ These facts, and their effects upon the constitution of
48 men, animals, ond vegetation, are not properly understood in
49 Europe, or, if known, are explained upon theoretioal assumptions