[18

INDIA

removed from the comparatively narrow and low level
lines of southern Himalayan watercourse and watershed,
where rushing torrents are crushed in between steep cliffs
and grassy slopes, or find their way to the plains amidst a
wilderness of magnificent mountain forest. There is no
comparison whatsoever between the dreary, wind-swept
solitudes, 15,000 to 16,000 feet in elevation, which stretch
from Kashmir to the Chinese frontier north of the Indus and
Brahmaputra, and the lovely, but often heat-ridden valleys
of the Himalaya, which enclose the upper tributaries of the
Sutlej and the Ganges.
There is a point about half-way between Kashmir and
Eastern Assam, situated at the back of the great central

£16. 36.—The Sources of the Indus, Sutlej, Ghigra,
and Brahmavutra.

snow barrier to which I have alluded, which forms one
of the world's great hydrographic centres. It is approximately
 marked by the Manasarawar Lake, or collection of
lakes, to the south-east of Kashmir. Here rises the Indus,
which takes a straight course north-westward through
Kashmir for some 500 miles (dividing the Mustagh and
Karakoram mountains of the Trans-Himalayan region
from the Himalayas) ere it takes its great bend south-west,
not very far from Gilgit, and thenceforward runs fairly
straight for another 1000 miles to the Arabian Sea.
Here, too, rises the Brahmaputra, which, under the name
of the Tsanpo (Great River), travels eastward for 8oo miles
through Tibet, passing south of Lhasa, till it, too, takes