After proceeding parallel to the river for six or seven miles, I crossed to the right bank. The stream was undivided, and about a hundred yards broad. It had a considerable velocity, and was about three feet deep in the centre. Its bed was full of large waterworn boulders and gravel, and the banks on both sides were, for a great distance from the river, of similar structure, and so little elevated above its surface, that a very slight rise of the water would have been sufficient to submerge them.
From the village of Tsatti, at which I encamped on the 14th of October, I followed the course of the Shayuk to its junction with a large stream descending from the north, which, from the name of the district in which the junction is situated, is commonly called the Nubra river. Thence I ascended the latter stream for about twenty miles, with the intention of making an attempt to penetrate to the north-east, across the mountains to the Nubra Chu of Vigne; but the lateness of the season, and especially the occurrence of several falls of snow, which extended down the mountain slopes almost as far as the plain, induced me to place reliance on the assurances of the people of the valley, that the difficulties of the road would be quite insurmountable.
[Sidenote: DISTRICT OF NUBRA. _October, 1847._]
The district of Nubra includes the whole course of the Shayuk river, from its great bend to the eastward of the point where I joined it below Digar, till it again contracts nine or ten miles below the village of Unmaru; and also the lower part of the valley of the Nubra river, as far up, indeed, as population and cultivation extend. The place of junction of the two rivers is elevated, according to my observation of the boiling-point of water, about 10,600 feet above the level of the sea. This may be considered as the mean elevation of the whole district; for the cultivated tracts nowhere rise to any height above the bed of the rivers, which have everywhere a very gentle and apparently uniform inclination.
[Sidenote: DESCRIPTION OF NUBRA. _October, 1847._]
The valley of the Shayuk is widest at the point of its junction with the Nubra river. At this place the level plain, including the gently sloping alluvium on each side, has a breadth of about six miles. The width of the valley gradually diminishes as we recede from the centre, the mountains encroaching more and more, till at last they hem in the river, leaving no space for villages or cultivation, and the valley ceases to be inhabited. The centre of the plain is uniformly occupied by a flat gravelly expanse, one to three miles in width, scarcely raised above the surface of the river, which, when flooded, covers a great part of it. On both sides of this gravelly bed, low platforms of alluvium, in the form of triangles, with their apices resting on the mountain ravines, slope very gently towards the base of mountains, which rise abruptly and precipitously on both sides of the valley, to a height of three or four thousand feet. Some of the more projecting spurs, even where the width of the valley is greatest, advance so far into the open plain as to abut upon the river and compel the traveller to ascend their slopes, in order to cross them in travelling from village to village.
