Himalayan Journals Part 13

From the top of the second moraine, a very curious scene opened up the valley, of another but more stony and desolate level lake-bed, through which the Yangma (here very rapid) rushed, cutting a channel about sixty feet deep; the flanks of this second lake-bed were cut most distinctly into two princ.i.p.al terraces, which were again subdivided into others, so that the general appearance was that of many raised beaches, but each so broken up, that, with the exception of one on the banks of the river, none were continuous for any distance. We descended 200 feet, and crossed the valley and river obliquely in a north-west direction, to a small temple and convent which stood on a broad flat terrace under the black, precipitous, west flank: this gave me a good opportunity of examining the structure of this part of the valley, which was filled with an acc.u.mulation, probably 200 feet thick at the deepest part, of angular gravel and enormous boulders, both imbedded in the gravel, and strewed on the flat surfaces of the terraces. The latter were always broadest opposite to the lateral valleys, perfectly horizontal for the short

Ill.u.s.tration--ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE YANGMA VALLEY.

distance that they were continuous; and very barren; there were no traces of fossils, nor could I a.s.sure myself of stratification.

The acc.u.mulation was wholly glacial; and probably a lake had supervened on the melting of the great glacier and its recedence, which lake, confined by a frozen moraine, would periodically lose its waters by sudden accessions of heat melting the ice of the latter.

Stratified silt, no doubt, once covered the lake bottom, and the terraces have, in succession, been denuded of it by rain and snow.

These causes are now in operation amongst the stupendous glaciers of north-east Sikkim, where valleys, dammed up by moraines, exhibit lakes hemmed in between these, the base of the glacier, and the flanks of the valleys.

Yangma convents stood at the mouth of a gorge which opened upon the uppermost terrace; and the surface of the latter, here well covered with gra.s.s, was furrowed into concentric radiating ridges, which were very conspicuous from a distance. The buildings consisted of a wretched collection of stone huts, painted red, enclosed by loose stone d.y.k.es. Two shockingly dirty Lamas received me and conducted me to the temple, which had very thick walls, but was undistinguishable from the other buildings. A small door opened upon an apartment piled full of old battered gongs, drums, sc.r.a.ps of silk hangings, red cloth, broken praying-machines--relics much resembling those in the lumber-room of a theatre. A ladder led from this dismal hole to the upper story, which was entered by a handsomely carved and gilded door: within, all was dark, except from a little lattice-window covered with oil-paper. On one side was the library, a carved case, with a hundred gilded pigeon-holes, each holding a real or sham book, and each closed by a little square door, on which hung a bag full of amulets. In the centre of the book-case was a recess, containing a genuine Jos or Fo, graced with his Chinese attribute of very long pendulous moustaches and beard, and totally wanting that air of contemplative repose which the Tibetan Lamas give to their idols.

Banners were suspended around, with paintings of Lha.s.sa, Teshoo Loombo, and various incarnations of Boodh. The books were of the usual Tibetan form, oblong squares of separate block-printed leaves of paper, made in Nepal or Bhotan from the bark of a _Daphne,_ bound together by silk cords, and placed between ornamented wooden boards.

On our way up the valley, we had pa.s.sed some mendongs and chaits, the latter very pretty stone structures, consisting of a cube, pyramid, hemisphere, and cone placed on the top of one another, forming together the tasteful combination which appears on the cover of these volumes.

Beyond the convents the valley again contracted, and on crossing a third, but much lower, moraine, a lake opened to view, surrounded by flat terraces, and a broad gravelly sh.o.r.e, part of the lake being dry. To the west, the cliffs were high, black and steep: to the east a large lateral valley, filled at about 1500 feet up with blue glaciers, led (as did the other lateral valleys) to the gleaming snows of Nango; the moraine, too, here ab.u.t.ted on the east flank of the Yangma valley, below the mouth of the lateral one. Much snow (from the October fall) lay on the ground, and the cold was pinching in the shade; still I could not help attempting to sketch this wonderfully grand scene, especially as lakes in the Himalaya are extremely rare: the present one was about a mile long, very shallow, but broad, and as smooth as gla.s.s: it reminded me of the tarn in Glencoe. The reflected lofty peak of Nango appeared as if frozen deep down in its gla.s.sy bed, every snowy crest and ridge being rendered with perfect precision.

Ill.u.s.tration--LOOKING ACROSS YANGMA VALLEY.

Nango is about 18,000 feet high; it is the next lofty mountain of the Kinchinjunga group to the west of Junnoo, and I doubt if any equally high peak occurs again for some distance further west in Nepal. Facing the Yangma valley, it presents a beautiful range of precipices of black rock, capped with a thick crust of snow: below the cliffs the snow again appears continuously and very steep, for 2000 to 3000 feet downwards, where it terminates in glaciers that descend to 14,000 feet. The steepest snow-beds appear cut into vertical ridges, whence the whole snowy face is--as it were--crimped in perpendicular, closely-set, zigzag lines, doubtless caused by the melting process, which furrows the surface of the snow into channels by which the water is carried off: the effect is very beautiful, but impossible to represent on paper, from the extreme delicacy of the shadows, and at the same time the perfect definition and precision of the outlines.

Towards the head of the lake, its bed was quite dry and gravelly, and the river formed a broad delta over it: the terraces here were perhaps 100 feet above its level, those at the lower end not nearly so much. Beyond the lake, the river became again a violent torrent, rus.h.i.+ng in a deep chasm, till we arrived at the fork of the valley, where we once more met with numerous dry lake-beds, with terraces high up on the mountain sides.

In the afternoon we reached the village of Yangma, a miserable collection of 200 to 300 stone huts, nestling under the steep south-east flank of a lofty, flat-topped terrace, laden with gigantic glacial boulders, and projecting southward from a snowy mountain which divides the valley. We encamped on the flat under the village, amongst some stone d.y.k.es, enclosing cultivated fields. One arm of the valley runs hence N.N.E. amongst snowy mountains, and appeared quite full of moraines; the other, or continuation of the Yangma, runs W.N.W., and leads to the Kanglachem pa.s.s.

Near our camp (of which the elevation was 13,500 feet), radishes, barley, wheat, potatos, and turnips, were cultivated as summer crops, and we even saw some on the top of the terrace, 400 feet above our camp, or nearly 14,000 feet above the sea; these were grown in small fields cleared of stones, and protected by d.y.k.es.

The scenery, though dismal, (no juniper even attaining this elevation,) was full of interest and grandeur, from the number and variety of snowy peaks and glaciers all around the elevated horizon; the ancient lake-beds, now green or brown with scanty vegetation, the vast moraines, the ridges of glacial debris, the flat terraces, marking, as it were with parallel roads, the bluff sides of the mountains, the enormous boulders perched upon them, and strewed everywhere around, the little Boodhist monuments of quaint, picturesque shapes, decorated with poles and banners, the many-coloured dresses of the people, the brilliant blue of the cloudless heaven by day, the depth of its blackness by night, heightened by the light of the stars, that blaze and twinkle with a l.u.s.tre unknown in less lofty regions: all these were subjects for contemplation, rendered more impressive by the stillness of the atmosphere, and the silence that reigned around. The village seemed buried in repose throughout the day: the inhabitants had already hybernated, their crops were stored, the curd made and dried, the pa.s.ses closed, the soil frozen, the winter's stock of fuel housed, and the people had retired into the caverns of their half subterranean houses, to sleep, spin wool, and think of Boodh, if of anything at all, the dead, long winter through. The yaks alone can find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed, disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* [Snow covers the ground at Yangma from December till April, and the falls are said to be very heavy, at times amounting to 12 feet in depth.]

I had taken three days' food to Yangma, and stayed there as long as it lasted: the rest of my provisions I had left below the first moraine, where a lateral valley leads east over the Nango pa.s.s to the Kambachen valley, which lay on the route back to Sikkim.

I was premature in complaining of my Wallanchoon tents, those provided for me at Yangma being infinitely worse, mere rags, around which I piled sods as a defence from the insidious piercing night-wind that descended from the northern glaciers in calm, but most keen, breezes. There was no food to be procured in the village, except a little watery milk, and a few small watery potatos.

The latter have only very recently been introduced amongst the Tibetans, from the English garden at the Nepalese capital, I believe, and their culture has not spread in these regions further east than Kinchinjunga, but they will very soon penetrate into Tibet from Dorjiling, or eastward from Nepal. My private stock of provisions --consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my kind friend Mr. Hodgson--had fallen very low; and I here found to my dismay that of four remaining two-pound cases, provided as meat, three contained prunes, and one _"dindon aux truffes!"_ Never did luxuries come more inopportunely; however the greasy French viand served for many a future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my rice, and according to the theory of chemists, to supply animal heat in these frigid regions.

As for my people, they were not accustomed to much animal food; two pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their common diet under cold and fatigue. The poorer Tibetans, especially, who undergo great privation and toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and a very little b.u.t.ter and salt: this is not only the case with those amongst whom I mixed so much, but is also mentioned by MM. Huc and Gabet, as having been observed by them in other parts of Tibet.

On the 1st of December I visited the village and terrace, and proceeded to the head of the Yangma valley, in order to ascend the Kanglachem pa.s.s as far as practicable. The houses are low, built of stone, of no particular shape, and are cl.u.s.tered in groups against the steep face of the terrace; filthy lanes wind amongst them, so narrow, that if you are not too tall, you look into the slits of windows on either hand, by turning your head, and feel the noisome warm air in whiffs against your face. Glacial boulders lie scattered throughout the village, around and beneath the cl.u.s.ters of houses, from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the native rock.

I entered one house by a narrow low door through walls four feet thick, and found myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood, and dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story, which was quite dark, and as I stood in it my head was in the upper, to which I ascended by a notched pole (like that in the picture of a Kamschatk house in Cook's voyage), and went into a small low room. The inmates looked half asleep, they were intolerably indolent and filthy, and were employed in spinning wool and smoking. A hole in the wall of the upper apartment led me on to the stone roof of the neighbouring house, from which I pa.s.sed to the top of a glacial boulder, descending thence by rude steps to the narrow alley. Wis.h.i.+ng to see as much as I could, I was led on a winding course through, in and out, and over the tops of the houses of the village, which alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or gravel pit, and gipsies living in old lime-kilns; and of all sorts of odd places that are turned to account as human habitations.

From the village I ascended to the top of the terrace, which is a perfectly level, sandy, triangular plain, pointing down the valley at the fork of the latter, and ab.u.t.ting against the flank of a steep, rocky, snow-topped mountain

Ill.u.s.tration--DIAGRAM OF THE GLACIAL TERRACES AT THE FORK OF THE YANGA VALLEY.

to the northward. Its length is probably half a mile from north to south, but it runs for two miles westward up the valley, gradually contracting. The surface, though level, is very uneven, being worn into hollows, and presenting ridges and hillocks of blown sand and gravel, with small black tufts of rhododendron. Enormous boulders of gneiss and granite were scattered over the surface; one of the ordinary size, which I measured, was seventy feet in girth, and fifteen feet above the ground, into which it had partly sunk.

From the southern pointed end I took sketches of the opposite flanks of the valleys east and west. The river was about 400 feet below me, and flowed in a little flat lake-bed; other terraces skirted it, cut out, as it were, from the side of that I was on. On the opposite flank of the valley were several superimposed terraces, of which the highest appeared to tally with the level I occupied, and the lowest was raised very little above the river; none were continuous for any distance, but the upper one in particular, could be most conspicuously traced up and down the main valley, whilst, on looking across to the eastern valley, a much higher, but less distinctly marked one appeared on it. The road to the pa.s.s lay west-north-west up the north bank of the Yangma river, on the great terrace; for two miles it was nearly level along the gradually narrowing shelf, at times dipping into the steep gulleys formed by lateral torrents from the mountains; and as the terrace disappeared, or melted, as it were, into the rising floor of the valley, the path descended upon the lower and smaller shelf.

We came suddenly upon a flock of gigantic wild sheep, feeding on scanty tufts of dried sedge and gra.s.s; there were twenty-five of these enormous animals, of whose dimensions the term sheep gives no idea: they are very long-legged, stand as high as a calf, and have immense horns, so large that the fox is said to take up his abode in their hollows, when detached and bleaching, on the barren mountains of Tibet. Though very wild, I am sure I could easily have killed a couple had I had my gun, but I had found it necessary to reduce my party so uncompromisingly, that I could not afford a man both for my gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to Dorjiling, with Mr. Hodgson's bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs. Travelling without fire-arms sounds strange in India, but in these regions animal life is very rare, game is only procured with much hunting and trouble, and to come within shot of a flock of wild sheep was a contingency I never contemplated. Considering how very short we were of any food, and quite out of animal diet, I could not but bitterly regret the want of a gun, but consoled myself by reflecting that the instruments were still more urgently required to enable me to survey this extremely interesting valley. As it was, the great beasts trotted off, and turned to tantalise me by grazing within an easy stalking distance. We saw several other flocks, of thirty to forty, during the day, but never, either on this or any future occasion, within shot. The _Ovis Ammon_ of Pallas stands from four to five feet high, and measures seven feet from nose to tail; it is quite a Tibetan animal, and is seldom seen below 14,000 feet, except when driven lower by snow; and I have seen it as high as 18,000 feet.

The same animal, I believe, is found in Siberia, and is allied to the Big-horn of North America.

Soon after descending to the bed of the valley, which is broad and open, we came on a second dry lake-bed, a mile long, with shelving banks all round, heavily snowed on the shaded side; the river was divided into many arms, and meandered over it, and a fine glacier-bound valley opened into it from the south. There were no boulders on its surface, which was pebbly, with tufts of gra.s.s and creeping tamarisk. On the banks I observed much granite, with large mica crystals, hornstone, tourmaline, and stratified quartz, with granite veins parallel to the foliation or lamination.

A rather steep ascent of a mile, through a contracted part of the valley, led to another and smaller lake-bed, a quarter of a mile long and 100 yards broad, covered with patches of snow, and having no lateral valley opening into it: it faced the now stupendous ma.s.ses of snow and ice which filled the upper part of the Yangma valley.

This lake-bed (elevation, 15,186 feet) was strewed with enormous boulders; a rude stone hut stood near it, where we halted for a few minutes at 1 p.m., when the temperature was 42.2 degrees, while the dew-point was only 20.7 degrees.* [This indicates a very dry state of the air, the saturation-point being 0.133 degrees; whereas, at the same hour at Calcutta it was 0.559 degrees.] At the same time, the black bulb thermometer, fully exposed on the snow, rose 54 degrees above the air, and the photometer gave 10.572. Though the sun's power was so great, there was, however, no appearance of the snow melting, evaporation proceeding with too great rapidity.

Ill.u.s.tration--KANGLACHEM Pa.s.s.

Enormous piles of gravel and sand had descended upon the upper end of this lake-bed, forming shelves, terraces, and curving ridges, apparently consolidated by ice, and covered in many places with snow.

Following the stream, we soon came to an immense moraine, which blocked up the valley, formed of angular boulders, some of which were fifty feet high. Respiration had been difficult for some time, and the guide we had taken from the village said we were some hours from the top of the pa.s.s, and could get but a little way further; we however proceeded, plunging through the snow, till on cresting the moraine a stupendous scene presented itself. A gulf of moraines, and enormous ridges of debris, lay at our feet, girdled by an amphitheatre of towering, snow-clad peaks, rising to 17,000 and 18,000 feet all around. Black scarped precipices rose on every side; deep snow-beds and blue glaciers rolled down every gulley, converging in the hollow below, and from each transporting its own materials, there ensued a complication of moraines, that presented no order to the eye. In spite of their mutual interference, however, each had raised a ridge of debris or moraine parallel to itself.

We descended with great difficulty through the soft snow that covered the moraine, to the bed of this gulf of snow and glaciers; and halted by an enormous stone, above the bed of a little lake, which was snowed all over, but surrounded by two superimposed level terraces, with sharply defined edges. The moraine formed a barrier to its now frozen waters, and it appeared to receive the drainage of many glaciers, which filtered through their gravelly ridges and moraines.

We could make no further progress; the pa.s.s lay at the distance of several hours' march, up a valley to the north, down which the glacier must have rolled that had deposited this great moraine; the pa.s.s had been closed since October, it being very lofty, and the head of this valley was far more snowy than that at Wallanchoon. We halted in the snow from 3 to 4 p.m., during which time I again took angles and observations; the height of this spot, called Pabuk, is 16,038 feet, whence the pa.s.s is probably considerably over 17,000 feet, for there was a steep ascent beyond our position. The sun sank at 3 p.m., and the thermometer immediately fell from 35 degrees to 30.75 degrees.* [At 4 o'clock, to 29.5 degrees, the average dew-point was 16.3 degrees, and dryness 0.55; weight of vapour in a cubic foot, 1.33 grains.]

After fixing in my note and sketch books the princ.i.p.al features of this sublime scene, we returned down the valley: the distance to our camp being fully eight miles, night overtook us before we got half-way, but a two days' old moon guided us perfectly, a remarkable instance of the clearness of the atmosphere at these great elevations. La.s.situde, giddiness, and headache came on as our exertions increased, and took away the pleasure I should otherwise have felt in contemplating by moonlight the varied phenomena, which seemed to crowd upon the restless imagination, in the different forms of mountain, glacier, moraine, lake, boulder and terrace. Happily I had noted everything on my way up, and left nothing intentionally to be done on returning. In making such excursions as this, it is above all things desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on the way out: I always carried my note-book and pencil tied to my jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in my hand. It is impossible to begin observing too soon, or to observe too much: if the excursion is long, little is ever done on the way home; the bodily powers being mechanically exerted, the mind seeks repose, and being fevered through over-exertion, it can endure no train of thought, or be brought to bear on a subject.

During my stay at Yangma, the thermometer never rose to 50 degrees, it fell to 14.75 degrees at night; the ground was frozen for several inches below the surface, but at two feet depth its temperature was 37.5 degrees. The black bulb thermometer rose on one occasion 84 degrees above the surrounding air. Before leaving, I measured by angles and a base-line the elevations of the great village-terrace above the river, and that of a loftier one, on the west flank of the main valley; the former was about 400 and the latter 700 feet.

Considering this latter as the upper terrace, and concluding that it marks a water level, it is not very difficult to account for its origin. There is every reason to suppose that the flanks of the valley were once covered to the elevation of the upper terrace, with an enormous acc.u.mulation of debris; though it does not follow that the whole valley was filled by ice-action to the same depth; the effect of glaciers being to deposit moraines between themselves and the sides of the valley they fill; as also to push forward similar acc.u.mulations. Glaciers from each valley, meeting at the fork, where their depth would be 700 feet of ice, would both deposit the necessary acc.u.mulation along the flanks of the great valley, and also throw a barrier across it. The melting waters of such glaciers would acc.u.mulate in lakes, confined by the frozen earth, between the moraines and mountains. Such lakes, though on a small scale, are found at the terminations and sides of existing glaciers, and are surrounded by terraces of s.h.i.+ngle and debris; these terraces being laid bare by the sudden drainage of the lakes during seasons of unusual warmth. To explain the phenomena of the Yangma valley, it may be necessary to demand larger lakes and deeper acc.u.mulations of debris than are now familiar to us, but the proofs of glaciers having once descended to from 8000 to 10,000 feet in every Sikkim and east Nepal valley communicating with mountains above 16,000 feet elevation, are overwhelming, and the glaciers must, in some cases, have been fully forty miles long, and 500 feet in depth. The absence of any remains of a moraine, or of blocks of rock in the valley below the fork, is I believe, the only apparent objection to this theory; but, as I shall elsewhere have occasion to observe, the magnitude of the moraines bears no fixed proportion to that of the glacier, and at Pabuk, the steep ridges of debris, which were heaped up 200 feet high, were far more striking than the more usual form of moraine.

On my way up to Yangma I had rudely plotted the valley, and selected prominent positions for improving my plan on my return: these I now made use of, taking bearings with the azimuth compa.s.s, and angles by means of a pocket s.e.xtant. The result of my running-survey of the whole valley, from 10,000 to 16,000 feet, I have given along with a sketch-map of my routes in India, which accompanies this volume.

Ill.u.s.tration--SKULLS OF OVIS AMMON.

CHAPTER XI

Ascend to Nango mountain--Moraines--Glaciers--Vegetation-- _Rhododendron Hodgsoni_--Rocks--Honey-combed surface of snow-- Perpetual snow--Top of pa.s.s--View--Elevation--Geology-- Distance of sound--Plants--Temperature--Scenery--Cliffs of granite and hurled boulders--Camp--Descent--Pheasants--Larch --Himalayan pines--Distribution of Deodar, note on-- Ta.s.sichooding temples--Kambachen village--Cultivation--Moraines in valley, distribution of--Picturesque lake-beds, and their vegetation--Tibetan sheep and goats--_Cryptogramma crispa_-- Ascent to Choonjerma pa.s.s--View of Junnoo--Rocks of its summit-- Misty ocean--Nepal peaks--Top of pa.s.s--Temperature, and observations--Gorgeous sunset--Descent to Yalloong valley-- Loose path--Night scenes--Musk deer.

We pa.s.sed the night a few miles below the great moraine, in a pine-wood (alt. 11,000 feet) opposite the gorge which leads to the Kambachen or Nango pa.s.s, over the south shoulder of the mountain of that name: it is situated on a ridge dividing the Yangma river from that of Kambachen, which latter falls into the Tambur opposite Lelyp.

The road crosses the Yangma (which is about fifteen feet wide), and immediately ascends steeply to the south-east, over a rocky moraine, clothed with a dense thicket of rhododendrons, mountain-ash, maples, pine, birch, juniper, etc. The ground was covered with silvery flakes of birch bark, and that of _Rhododendron Hodgsoni,_ which is as delicate as tissue-paper, and of a pale flesh-colour. I had never before met with this species, and was astonished at the beauty of its foliage, which was of a beautiful bright green, with leaves sixteen inches long.

Beyond the region of trees and large shrubs the alpine rhododendrons filled the broken surface of the valley, growing with _Potentilla,_ Honeysuckle, _Polygonum,_ and dwarf juniper. The peak of Nango seemed to tower over the gorge, rising behind some black, splintered, rocky cliffs, sprinkled with snow, narrow defiles opened up through these cliffs to blue glaciers, and their mouths were invariably closed by beds of s.h.i.+ngly moraines, curving outwards from either, flank in concentric ridges.

Towards the base of the peak, at about 14,000 feet, the scenery is very grand; a great moraine rises suddenly to the north-west, under the princ.i.p.al ma.s.s of snow and ice, and barren slopes of gravel descend from it; on either side are rugged precipices; the ground is bare and stony, with patches of brown gra.s.s: and, on looking back, the valley appears very steep to the first shrubby vegetation, of dark green rhododendrons, bristling with ugly stunted pines.

We followed a valley to the south-east, so as to turn the flank of the peak; the path lying over beds of October snow at 14,000 feet, and over plashy ground, from its melting. Sometimes our way lay close to the black precipices on our right, under which the snow was deep; and we dragged ourselves along, grasping every prominence of the rock with our numbed fingers. Granite appeared in large veins in the crumpled gneiss at a great elevation, in its most beautiful and loosely-crystallised form, of pearly white prisms of felspar, gla.s.sy quartz, and milk-white flat plates of mica, with occasionally large crystals of tourmaline. Garnets were very frequent in the gneiss near the granite veins. Small rushes, gra.s.ses, and sedges formed the remaining vegetation, amongst which were the withered stalks of gentians, _Sedum, Arenaria, Silene,_ and many Composite plants.

At a little below 15,000 feet, we reached enormous flat beds of snow, which were said to be perpetual, but covered deeply with the October fall. They were continuous, and like all the snow I saw at this season, the surface was honeycombed into thin plates, dipping north at a high angle; the intervening fissures were about six inches deep.

A thick mist here overtook us, and this, with the great difficulty of picking our way, rendered the ascent very fatiguing.

Being sanguine about obtaining a good view, I found it almost impossible to keep my temper under the aggravations of pain in the forehead, la.s.situde, oppression of breathing, a dense drizzling fog, a keen cold wind, a slippery footing, where I was stumbling at every few steps, and icy-cold wet feet, hands, and eyelids; the latter, odd as it sounds, I found a very disagreeable accompaniment of continued raw cold wind.

After an hour and a half's toilsome ascent, during which we made but little progress, we reached the crest, crossing a broad shelf of snow between two rocky eminences; the ridge was unsnowed a little way down the east flank; this was, in a great measure, due to the eastern exposure being the more sunny, to the prevalence of the warm and melting south-east winds that blow up the deep Kambachen valley, and to the fact that the great snow-beds on the west side are drifted acc.u.mulations.* [Such enormous beds of snow in depressions, or on gentle slopes, are generally adopted as indicating the lower limit of perpetual snow. They are, however, winter acc.u.mulations, due mainly to eddies of wind, of far more snow than can be melted in the following summer, being hence perennial in the ordinary sense of the word. They pa.s.s into the state of glacier ice, and, obeying the laws that govern the motions of a viscous fluid, so admirably elucidated by Forbes ("Travels in the Alps"), they flow downwards. A careful examination of those great beds of snow in the Alps, from whose position the mean lower level of perpetual snow, in that lat.i.tude, is deduced, has convinced me that these are mainly due to acc.u.mulations of this kind, and that the true limit of perpetual snow, or that point where all that falls melts, is much higher than it is usually supposed to be.] The mist cleared off, and I had a partial, though limited, view. To the north the blue ice-clad peak of Nango was still 2000 feet above us, its snowy mantle falling in great sweeps and curves into glacier-bound valleys, over which the ice streamed out of sight, bounded by black aiguilles of gneiss. The Yangma valley was quite hidden, but to the eastward the view across the stupendous gorge of the Kambachen, 5000 feet below, to the waste of snow, ice, and rock, piled in confusion along the top of the range of Junnoo and Choonjerma, parallel to this but higher, was very grand indeed: this we were to cross in two days, and its appearance was such, that our guide doubted the possibility of our doing it. A third and fourth mountain ma.s.s (unseen) lay beyond this, between us and Sikkim, divided by valleys as deep as those of Yangma and Kambachen.

Having hung up my instruments, I ascended a few hundred feet to some naked rocks, to the northward; they were of much-crumpled and dislocated gneiss, thrown up at a very high angle, and striking north-west. Chlorite, schist, and quartz, in thin beds, alternated with the gneiss, and veins of granite and quartz, were injected through them.

It fell calm; when the distance to which the voice was carried was very remarkable; I could distinctly hear every word spoken 300 to 400 yards off, and did not raise my voice when I asked one of the men to bring me a hammer.

The few plants about were generally small tufted _Arenarias_ and woolly _Compositae,_ with a thick-rooted Umbellifer that spread its short, fleshy leaves and branches flat on the ground; the root was very aromatic, but wedged close in the rock. The temperature at 4 p.m. was 23 degrees, and bitterly cold; the elevation, 15,770 feet; dew-point, 16 degrees. The air was not very dry; saturation-point, 0.670 degrees, whereas at Calcutta it was 0.498 degrees at the same hour.

The descent was to a broad, open valley, into which the flank of Nango dipped in tremendous precipices, which reared their heads in splintered snowy peaks. At their bases were shoots of debris fully 700 feet high, sloping at a steep angle. Enormous ma.s.ses of rock, detached by the action of the frost and ice from the crags, were scattered over the bottom of the valley; they had been precipitated from above, and gaining impetus in their descent, bad been hurled to almost inconceivable distances from the parent cliff. All were of a very white, fine-grained crystallised granite, full of small veins of the same rock still more finely crystallised. The weathered surface of each block was black, and covered with moss and lichens; the others beautifully white, with clean, sharp-fractured edges.

The material of which they were composed was so hard that I found it difficult to detach a specimen.