Kashmir, Sir Younghusband Francis Edward [the best novels to read .TXT] 📗

IN THE SIND VALLEY

To realise the full, long-measured roll of their majestic evolution we should have to go back to the time when the swift revolving sun—itself one only among a hundred million other stars of no less magnitude—swished off from its circumference the wreath of fiery mist now called the Earth; and we should have to trace that mist, cooling and consolidating, first to a molten mass with a plastic crust enveloped in a dense and watery atmosphere, and then to a hardened surface of dry land with cavities in which the ocean settled. But the story, as it is with more detailed accuracy known, commences at the time when a shallow sea covered central and northern India, and extended over the site of the present Himalaya, including Kashmir and the region of the mighty peaks behind. This, then, is the first essential fact to lay hold of, that at the commencement of the authentic history of Kashmir, the whole—vale and mountain peak alike—lay unborn beneath the sea.

How long ago this was it is not possible to say within a million years or so. But this much may be said with certainty, that the period is to be reckoned not in thousands, nor yet in hundreds of thousands, but in millions of years. Geologists have names for different geological epochs, and do not usually speak of them by definite numbers of years, for there is still much controversy as to the precise length of time occupied by each. But to fix in the mind of the general reader a rough idea of the immense periods of time with which we are dealing in tracing the history of the mountains, it is useful to speak in terms of numbers, even though they may be only very approximately correct. We may then assume that the oldest rocks in Kashmir were deposited in sediment at the bottom of the afore-mentioned shallow sea a hundred million years ago. Some geologists and biologists think that a still longer time must have elapsed. Some physicists would maintain that even so much is not allowable. But as an average opinion, we may take a hundred million years ago as the commencement of Kashmir history.

What were the limits of the sea which then rolled over the site of Kashmir is not yet precisely known. But the lower portion of the Indian peninsula was then dry land, and connected by land with Africa; and the sea probably extended westward to Europe and eastward to China. Into it the rivers bore down the debris and detritus worked off by the rain from the dry land; and thus were slowly deposited, in the long course of many million years, sediments hundreds and thousands of feet in thickness which, subsequently upheaved and hardened, form the Kashmir mountains of the present day.

The first great movement of which authentic record has yet been traced took place at the close of the Jaunsar period. The bosom of the earth heaved restlessly, and what had already been deposited in the depths of the sea now emerged above the surface. Volcanoes burst through the crust, and the sedimentary deposits, hardened into rock, were covered with sheets of lava and volcanic ash, which now form the hills at the back of Srinagar, including the Takht-i-Suliman.

This was Kashmir's first appearance—not, however, in the form of a beautiful valley surrounded by forests and snow-capped mountains, but rather in the form of an archipelago of bare volcanic islands. And even these were not permanent, for a period of general subsidence followed and they slowly sank beneath the sea which was then probably connected with America.

During the Devonian period Kashmir was still submerged; but in a subsequent portion of the time when the Carbonaceous system was being deposited there was a second period of great volcanic activity, when the southern portion of Kashmir again formed an archipelago of volcanic islands.

Eventually all Kashmir emerged, and became part of the mainland of India at that time joined with Africa; so that Kashmir which had before been joined by sea with America was now joined by land with Africa. Such are the mighty movements of this seemingly immovable earth.

But it was only for a brief space that Kashmir was visible. Then once again, in mid-Carboniferous times, it subsided beneath the sea, there to remain for some millions of years till the early Tertiary period, four million years ago, when it again emerged, and the sea was gradually pushed back from Tibet and the adjacent Himalaya, till by the end of the Eocene period both Tibet and the whole Himalaya had finally become dry land. Kashmir was now a portion of the continental area and the culminating effort of the earth forces was at hand. For yet another period of great volcanic activity ensued, connected, perhaps, with the crustal disturbances to which the origin of the Himalaya is attributed. Masses of molten granite were extruded from beneath the earth's surface through the sedimentary deposit. And these granitic masses, issuing from the fiery interior of the earth, pushing ever upward, reached and passed the level of eternal snow till they finally settled into the line of matchless peaks now known as the Himalaya.

LAKE SHISHA NAG AT SUNSET

This then, briefly, is a record of the successive phases of upheaval and subsidence through which Kashmir has passed. Through by far the greater portion of the earth's history—through perhaps ninety out of the hundred million years—Kashmir has lain beneath the sea. And it is only within the last four million years that it has finally emerged.

What has actually caused the final upheaval; from whence came the force which raised the mountains is not yet entirely known. One well-known theory is that the earth's crust in cooling has to accommodate itself to a constantly decreasing diameter, and so gets crinkled and crumpled into folds. Anyhow from whatever cause, and quite apart from the ordinary up-and-down movements of the crust, there has evidently been immense lateral pressure, and on the drive into Kashmir many instances may be observed of the once level strata being crumpled into folds as the leaves of a book might be on being laterally pressed. There has been, says Mr. Middlemiss, "a steadily acting lateral pressure of the earth's crust tending to bank it up against the central crystalline zone [that is the core of intrusive granite of which the line of great peaks is formed] by a movement and a resistance in two opposite directions." And besides this pressure, the effect of tangential stresses tending to compress the earth's surface laterally and so form corrugations on it, there was from some remote internal cause this welling up from below of vast masses of granite which forced their way through the pre-existing rocks and formed the high peaks, the core of the Himalayan ranges.

These were the approximate causes—though the ultimate causes are not known—from which the Kashmir mountains originated. And tremendous though the forces must have been to cause such mighty effects, there is no evidence that they were violent. The stupendous result may have been imperceptibly attained. If Nanga Parbat rose not more than one inch in a month, it would have taken only 26,600 years to rise from the sea-level, and this is but a moment in the vast epochs with which we are dealing. Nature has worked without haste and without violence. Slowly, relentlessly, and uninterruptedly her work has progressed till the great final result stands before us in all its impressive majesty.

Such was the origin and history of the Kashmir mountains. It remains to trace the course of life upon them, and picture their appearance in the various stages of their history.

THE TANNIN GLEN, LIDAR VALLEY

In that remote time, which we have roughly taken as a hundred million years ago, when the oldest rocks, those for instance at Gulmarg, were first laid down in level soft deposit on the ocean bottom, there was no life on land or sea. In no part of the world have the rocks of this period given the slightest trace of any form of life. But in the course of time, in some warm climate and in some quarter where sea and land meet, and where, through the action of the tides, a portion of the land is alternately covered and laid open to the sunshine—that is, in some spot where earth and air, light, heat and water might all have their effect—it has been surmised that minute microscopic specks of slime must have appeared imbued with just that mysterious element which distinguishes life from all chemical combinations however complex.

Of this initial stage, which would not have been perceptible to the naked eye, no trace could possibly be left, but in the pre-Cambrian rocks in Europe there have been detected very minute specimens of the simplest known forms of life—the Protozoa—and obscure tracks and markings indicating the existence of life of some kind. And in the next geological period—the Cambrian and Silurian, say between thirty and fifty million years ago—there is not indeed in the Kashmir rocks yet any sign of life, but in the neighbouring district of Spiti there has been found in corresponding rocks fossils of corals, trilobites, shell-fish, worms, brachiopods (lamp-shells), and gastropods.

When Kashmir made its first brief emergence from the waters, in an archipelago of volcanic islands, though there was life of low and simple kind in the sea, on land there was none, and the islands must have been absolutely bare. Neither on hill-side nor on plain was there a speck of vegetation, not even the humblest moss or lichen, and not a sign of animal life. No bird or insect floated in the air. And over all there must have reigned a silence such as I remember in the Gobi Desert, and which was so felt that when after many weeks I arrived at an oasis, the twittering of the birds and the humming of the insects appeared as an incessant roar.

GOING TO THE WEDDING, UPPER INDUS VALLEY

It does not, however, follow from its bareness that the scenery of this archipelago may not have been beautiful, for those who have frequently passed up the Gulf of Suez know that the early morning and evening effects on bare deserts and rocky hills are often the most perfect in the delicacy and brilliance of their opalescent hues, and that the combination of this colouring with the bluey-green and the life and sparkle of the sea makes up a beauty which wooded mountain-sides may often lack. And as from the islands the summits of snowy ranges in India and Central Asia might be discerned, Kashmir even in its primitive and most barren stage must yet have had many a charm of its own.

But the bareness of the islands must have shortened the term of their existence, for it meant that the hills and plains were easily scoured out by the torrential rains which then fell upon them. It seems difficult in these