CAUSE OF UPHEAVAL 215
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 decreas- ing 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 in- stances 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 résistance in two
