KASHMIR AND THE HIMALAYAS 113

Kashmir northern dependencies we are perhaps justified
in assuming that the northern rim of the Indus basin,
the Karakoram mountain range, which includes Mount
Godwin-Austen (28,278 feet) and other mighty peaks,
indicates the central crystalline axis of upheaval of the
great mass of elevated plateau and mountain. But these
magnificent Trans-Himalayan chains subsideinto the plateau
about the longitude of the Pangong Lake (79° E.L.), and
are apparently only recognisable farther by geological
indications. It is about the point of their subsidence that
the most direct and easiest access is found from Leh

Ai Loney

AROVE 12

Fic. 38.—The Sources of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra.

(the capital of Ladak) eastward into Tibet, and from
prehistoric days this has been the main line of communication
 between Kashmir and Lhasa. It is more or less
along this line (about 200-300 miles from the Kashmir
border) that through all ages those gold mines have been
worked which were famous in the days of Herodotus.
Tibetan gold has found its way to Kashmir on the west,
Kashgar on the north, Pekin on the east, and, finally, to
India on the south by many routes and passes, those of the
Kumaon (or Sutlej River) group being now most traversed.
The Ladak group, the Kumaon group, and the Sikkim group
form the three best-known and most practicable groups of
H