IN SEARCH OF THE SOURCE OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA
Now we were already far to the west; the force of circumstances had
forced us to leave behind us step by step ever larger areas of unknown
country to the north. I was vexed, but I would, at any rate, endeavour
to do all that was possible in my hampered condition. At Shamsang,
Ryder's Lahtsang, we were at the place where the actual source streams
of the Brahmaputra converged from various directions. I had long
determined to push on to the unknown source, unless the Tibetans placed
unsurmountable obstacles in my way.
The learned and clear-sighted Colonel Montgomerie had sent Nain Sing in
the year 1865 up the valley of the upper Brahmaputra (Illust. 380). From
our Shamsang the Pundit crossed the Marium-la, and said in his report
that the sources of the river were certainly in the huge chain seen in
the south, and were fed by its glaciers. He did not, however, go to look
for the actual sources, but continued his journey westwards.
The next year, 1866, Thomas Webber made an excursion into Tibetan
territory, and his route lay a little to the south of Nain Sing's. On
his sketch-map it may be seen that he crossed some of the source streams
of the Tsangpo, but of the tract in which the sources are situated he
gives no further indication than "Snowy ranges unexplored." And when he
says in his text that here are the sources of the great Brahmaputra,
which have their origin in the Gurla glaciers, the confusion is
hopeless; for the sources of the river lie 60 miles from Gurla, a
mountain which has nothing whatever to do with the Brahmaputra.
The political expedition which, under the command of Rawling in the
close of the year 1904, had Gartok for its destination, and the chief
result of which was the admirable map of the upper Brahmaputra valley
surveyed by Ryder and his assistants (Map 7), travelled from Shamsang
over the Marium-la and north of the Gunchu-tso to Manasarowar. It was
therefore of the greatest importance to me to travel to the south of
their route through country they had not touched on. They travelled by
the same road as Nain Sing, and left the source of the river at a
distance of 40 miles to the south. From Ryder's report it might be
supposed that he considered the Marium-la to be the cradle of the
Brahmaputra; but in a letter I have recently received from him, he
states that such is not the case, but that he always recognized that the
actual source must lie among the mountains in the south-west, which he
has set down on his map from bearings taken of their peaks. Ryder also
remarks in his report that the principal headwaters come from there.
Instead of entering into a diffuse discussion of the problem, I
introduce in this book small sketches of the maps of my three
predecessors, Nain Sing, Webber, and Ryder. No other traveller had ever
been in this region, and I would on no account miss the opportunity of
penetrating to the actual source of the Brahmaputra and fixing its
position definitely.
How was this to be done? At Shamsang the source streams meet, and below
this point the united river bears the name Martsang-tsangpo. First of
all, I must, of course, gauge the quantities of water in the source
streams, and, if they were nearly equal, we must be content to say that
the Brahmaputra has several sources.
With ten men, the boat, and the necessary measuring apparatus, I betook
myself first, on July 8, to the point on the southern side of the valley
where two streams run together, the Kubi-tsangpo from the south-west and
the Chema-yundung from the west. A short day's march farther west the
Chema-yundung receives the Marium-chu, which comes from the Marium-la.
First the united stream was gauged, and found to discharge 1554 cubic
feet of water per second, and immediately after the Chema-yundung, which
discharged almost 353 cubic feet. Subtracting this from the volume of
the united river, we get 1201 cubic feet as the discharge of the
Kubi-tsangpo. This river is then three and a half times as large as the
Chema, and it should be remembered that the Chema also receives the
water of the Marium-chu, so that its 353 cubic feet represent the united
volumes of two tributaries.
When we encamped in the evening with the main caravan in the Umbo
district (15,427 feet), where the Chema-yundung and the Marium-chu
unite, the rivers were very considerably swollen, and the water, which
had been clear in the morning, had become turbid. Therefore only the two
measurements taken at the same time were directly comparable, and I will
pass over all the subsequent measurements. To arrive at the source we
had only to know that the Kubi-tsangpo is far larger than the two
others, so we had to follow its course up into the mountains, which none
of my predecessors had done. The Tibetans also said that the Kubi was
the upper course of the Martsang-tsangpo.
On July 9 we parted from Guffaru and the main caravan, which was to keep
to the great high-road and cross the Marium-la to Tokchen, while Robert
and I with three Ladakis and three armed Tibetans followed the
Kubi-tsangpo up to its source. Our way ran west-south-west. Where we
crossed the Chema-yundung, a good distance above the last delta arms of
the Marium-chu, the river carried little more than 140 cubic feet of
water, and therefore the Kubi-tsangpo, flowing to the south-east of it,
is here fully eight times as large. At the ford our Tibetans drove a peg
with a white rag into the edge of the bank, and when I asked why, they
answered: "That the river may not become tired of carrying its water
down the valleys."
At Tok-jonsung, where we bivouacked among some black tents, the Chema
looked very large, but its water ran very slowly. The nomads of the
district go up to the Chang-tang in winter. Here also we heard, as on
many former occasions, that smallpox was raging frightfully in Purang,
and that all the roads leading thither were closed. No country lies so
high that the angel of death cannot reach it.
In the night the thermometer fell to 15.4°, but we were at a height of
15,991 feet. The snowy mountains in front of us to the south-west became
more distinct. The Chema river meandered with a slow fall, and we left
it on the right before we came to our camp in Sheryak.
[Illustration: 240. LAMA IN MY BOAT.]
[Illustration: 241. LOADING THE BOAT WITH BOXES ON CROSSING THE
BRAHMAPUTRA.]
We ride on July 11 on to the south-west in a strong wind, passing
already porous, melting snowdrifts. Solid rock is not to be seen, but
all the detritus consists of granite and green schist. We follow a
clearly marked nomad path, leading up to the small pass Tso-niti-kargang
on the ridge which forms a watershed between the Chema-yundung and the
Kubi-tsangpo. The large valley of the latter is below us to the south.
The water of the Kubi-tsangpo is very muddy, but on the right bank is a
perfectly clear moraine lake. From the south-east the affluent Lung-yung
flows out of its deeply cut valley. The view is grand on all sides. From
north-west to north-east extends a confused sea of mountains, the crests
and ramifications of the Trans-Himalaya, intersected by the northern
tributaries of the upper Tsangpo. To the south we have a panorama
magnificent and overpowering in its fascinating wildness and whiteness,
an irregular chain of huge peaks, sharp, black, and fissured, sometimes
pointed like pyramids, sometimes broad and rounded, and behind them we
see firn-fields from which the snow slides down to form glaciers among
the dark rocks. Prominent in the south is the elevation Ngomo-dingding,
and from its glaciers the Kubi-tsangpo derives a considerable part of
its water. To the west-south-west lies the Dongdong, another mass with
glaciers equally extensive, and to the right of it are heights called
Chema-yundung-pu, from which the river of the same name takes its rise,
and flows down circuitously to the confluence at Shamsang. To the
south-east the position of the Nangsa-la is pointed out to me beyond
the nearest mountains, where the river Gyang-chu, which we came across a
few days before, has its source.
We go down among moraines, granite detritus, and boulders. Here three
small clear moraine pools, called Tso-niti, lie at different heights.
The ground becomes more level, and we pass a _mani_, a rivulet trickling
among the rubbish, and a small pond, before we reach camp 200 in Lhayak,
on the bank of the Kubi-tsangpo, where the pasturage is excellent and we
find numerous traces of nomad camps. In several places we come across
large sheets of fine thin birch bark, which have been detached by storms
and carried by the wind over the mountains from the south.
Our three musketeers told us that all the nomads now sojourning in the
Shamsang district would come up here in a few weeks to stay a month and
a half, till the snow drove them away again. In winter the snow lies 5
feet deep, and many men and animals perish in the snowdrifts, when the
herds go too high up the mountains and are surprised by early heavy
falls of snow. The autumn before, I was told, 23 yaks were grazing up at
the foot of Ngomo-dingding when it began to snow furiously. Several
herdsmen hurried up to drive the animals down to lower ground, but the
snow was heaped up in such large quantities that they had to turn back
lest they should perish themselves. In the spring they went up, and
found the skeletons and hides of the unfortunate animals. The Shamsang
Gova had lately lost some horses in the same way. Even the wild asses
cannot escape from the spring snow. They cannot run when the snow is
deep, and after trying in vain to reach bare ground, they die of
starvation and are frozen in the snowdrifts. Our three guides, who
themselves pass the summer up here, assured me that the wild asses are
frozen in an upright position, and often stand on all fours when the
summer sun has thawed the snow. They had seen dead wild asses standing
in herds as though they were alive.
The snow, which falls in winter on the source region of the
Brahmaputra, melts in spring, and together with the river ice produces a
flood of far larger volume, it is said, than the summer flood produced
by rain. This is probably true of the uppermost course of the Tsangpo,
but lower down the rain-flood is certainly the greater. In general, the
variations in the water-level are more marked in the higher lands, and
the further the water flows downstream the more the fluctuations tend to
disappear.
"Is not our country hard and terrible to live in? Is not the Bombo
Chimbo's country (India) better?" asked my Tibetans.
"I cannot say that; in India there are tigers, snakes, poisonous
insects, heat, fever, and plague to contend with, which are not met with
up here in the fresh air."
"Yes, but that is better than the continual wind, the sharp cold, and
the fruitless waiting for rain. This year we have only had a couple of
light showers, and we shall lose our herds if more rain does not come."
"Well, the summer in Tibet is very pleasant when it rains, while in
India it is suffocating; on the other hand, the winter in Tibet is
severe and cruel, but comfortable in India."
"Tell us, Bombo Chimbo, is it you, with your glass and measuring
instruments, that is keeping back the rain this year? At this season it
usually rains heavily, but you perhaps prefer clear weather, to be able
to see the country and that the roads may not be soft."
"No, I long for rain as much as you, for my animals are getting thin,
and cannot eat their fill of this poor grass, which has stood here since
last summer. Only the gods can control the weather, and the sons of men
must take the rain and sunshine as they are sent to them from above."
They looked at one another doubtfully. It was not the first time that
they had ascribed to me powers as great as those of their own gods, and
it would have been difficult to have convinced them of their error.
At midnight the men heard a one-year-old child crying and calling for
help on the bank of the Kubi-tsangpo. They woke one another in
astonishment, and Rabsang and two Tibetans went off with a gun, thinking
that it was a ghost. When they came near they heard the child weeping
quite distinctly, and our heroes were so frightened that they thought it
safest to make all haste back again. When I asked them how they knew
that it was a year-old child, they answered, that from the sound it
could not have been younger or older. When I suggested that it might
have been a wolf cub, as there were no human beings in the
neighbourhood, they declared that it must have been an uneasy spirit
wandering about the bank.
There must have been something supernatural about, for I dreamed in the
night that all the fragments of birch bark which we had seen on our
day's ride were letters of invitation from the Maharaja of Nepal, that I
had accepted the invitation, and was lying half asleep on a soft carpet
of grass and listening to the rustle of the warm wind among the cedars
of the Himalayas. The dream was so vivid that I could not think all day
long of anything else but the warm beautiful land behind the mountains.
Even in camp No. 200 I perceived fairly clearly how the land lay, but we
were not yet at the actual source, and therefore we continued our march
south-westwards on July 12. The foot of the snowy mountains seemed quite
near. The river is broad, and divided by islands of mud into several
arms. On the left side of the valley, where we march, are a couple of
walls of green and black schist, but elsewhere old moraines extend on
all sides. We cross a stream flowing from the country below Dongdong to
join the Kubi-tsangpo. The Tsechung-tso is a small moraine lake. The
valley bottom rises slowly, and consists of loose material sparsely
covered with grass. Occasionally a small erratic block of grey granite
is seen. Rags, dung, and fragments of bone lie on the summer
camping-grounds. At length the river becomes as broad as a small lake,
enclosed in morainic rubbish and driftsand.
We camped at the stone wall of Shapka, one of the headquarters of the
nomads. Here, on the right bank of the Kubi-tsangpo, stands a dark
purple ridge of medium height with patches of snow, which melt in the
course of the summer. The land at the foot of this colossal mountain is
remarkably flat, and instead of a cone of detritus there is a stream
expanded into a lake. The water from the melting snow has washed away
all solid matter.
As we came to camp No. 201, at a height of 15,883 feet, the peaks
disappeared in clouds, but just before sunset the sky cleared and the
last clouds floated away like light white steam over the glaciers of
Ngomo-dingding, which clearly displayed their grand structure, with high
lateral moraines and concentric rings of grey lumpy terminal moraines.
The surface, except where here and there blue crevasses yawned in the
ice, was white with snow and the porous melting crust.
When the sun had set, nine peaks in a line from south-east to south-west
stood out with remarkable sharpness. Raven-black pinnacles, cliffs and
ridges rise out of the white snowfields, and the glaciers emerge from
colossal portals. A whole village of tents rising to heaven! The source
of the Brahmaputra could not be embellished with a grander and more
magnificent background. Holy and thrice holy are these mountains, which
from their cold lap give birth and sustenance to the river celebrated
from time immemorial in legend and song, the river of Tibet and Assam,
the river _par excellence_, the son of Brahma. One generation after
another of black Tibetans has in the course of thousands of years
listened to its roar between the two loftiest mountain systems of the
world, the Himalaya and the Trans-Himalaya, and one generation after
another of the various tribes of Assam has watered its fields with its
life-giving floods and drunk of its blessed water. But where the source
lay no one knew. Three expeditions had determined its position
approximately, but none had been there. No geography had been able to
tell us anything of the country round the source of the Brahmaputra.
Only a small number of nomads repair thither yearly to spend a couple of
short summer months. Here it is, here in the front of three glacier
tongues, that the river so revered by the Hindu tribes begins its course
of some 1800 miles through the grandest elevations of the world, from
which its turbid volumes of water roll first to the east, then
southwards, cutting a wild valley through the Himalayas, and finally
flowing south-westwards over the plains of Assam. The upper Brahmaputra,
the Tsangpo, is truly the chief artery of Tibet, for within its drainage
basin is concentrated the great mass of its population, while its lower
course is surrounded by the most fruitful and populous provinces of
Assam. The Brahmaputra is therefore one of the noblest rivers of the
world, and few waterways have a more illustrious descent and a more
varied and more glorious career, for nations have grown up on its banks
and have lived there, and their history and culture have been intimately
connected with it since the earliest times of human records.
Busied with such thoughts, I went out again in the evening to gaze at
the cliffs of the nine peaks which showed like dim misty shadows, while
the ice and snowfields below, of the same colour as the sky, were not
perceptible in the night. Then a flash of lightning blazed up behind
Kubi-gangri, as the whole massive is called, and the crest crowned with
eternal snow stood suddenly out in sharp pitch-black contours. Singular,
entrancing land, where spirit voices are heard in the night and the sky
blazes up in bluish light. I listened for a long time to the brook
Shapka-chu, gently trickling down its stony bed to the bank of the
Kubi-tsangpo.
We had still some way to go before we came to the actual source, and I
could not conscientiously leave Kubi-gangri without determining the
absolute height of the source by the boiling-point thermometer. Our
Tibetans were exceedingly friendly, and seemed to take an interest in
showing us this point, of which I had spoken so often during the past
days and about which I had put so many questions. I was really thankful
for, and overjoyed at, this unexpected favourable opportunity of fixing
the position of the source, though I knew that my excursion to
Kubi-gangri could only be a very cursory and defective reconnaissance. A
thorough exploration of this neighbourhood would require several years,
for the summer up here is short and the time for work is over in two
months. But though I succeeded in learning only the chief outlines of
the physical geography, I can count this excursion as one of the most
important events of my last journey in Tibet. Accordingly, we decided to
ride up to the source next day, July 13. Only Rabsang, Robert, and a
Tibetan were to accompany me. The rest were to wait for our return under
the command of Tsering.