Himalayan Journals, vol 2 by J. D. Hooker (android pdf ebook reader TXT) 📕

MM. Huc and Gabet give a graphic account of such an operation during their stay at Kounboum.

On the 29th of August I left Lachoong and proceeded up the valley.

The road ran along a terrace, covered with long grass, and bounded by lofty banks of unstratified gravel and sand, and passed through

beautiful groves of green pines, rich in plants. No oak nor chesnut ascends above 9000 feet here or elsewhere in the interior of Sikkim, where they are replaced by a species of hazel (Corylus); in the

North Himalaya, on the other hand, an oak (Quercus semecarpifolia,

see vol. i., chapter viii) is amongst the most alpine trees, and the nut is a different species, more resembling the European. On the

outer Sikkim ranges oaks (Q. annulata?) ascend to 10,000 feet, and there is no hazel. Above the fork, the valley contracts extremely,

and its bed is covered with moraines and landslips, which often bury the larches and pines. Marshes occur here and there, full of the

sweet-scented Hierochloe grass, the Scotch Thalictrum alpinum, and an Eriocaulon, which ascends to 10,000 feet. The old moraines were very difficult to cross, and on one I found a barricade, which had

been erected to deceive me regarding the frontier, had I chosen this route instead of the Lachen one, in May.

Broad flats clothed with rhododendron, alternate with others covered with mud, boulders, and gravel, which had flowed down from the gorges on the west, and which still contained trees, inclined in all

directions, and buried up to their branches; some of these debacles were 400 yards across, and sloped at an angle of 2 degrees to 3

degrees, bearing on their surfaces blocks fifteen yards in diameter.*

[None were to be compared in size and extent with that at Bex, at the mouth of the Rhone valley.] They seem to subside materially, as I

perceived they had left marks many feet higher on the tree-trunks.

Such debacles must often bury standing forests in a very favourable material, climate, and position for becoming fossilized.

On the 30th of August I arrived at Yeumtong, a small summer

cattle-station, on a flat by the Lachoong, 11,920 feet above the sea; the general features of which closely resemble those of the narrow

Swiss valleys. The west flank is lofty and precipitous, with narrow gullies still retaining the winter's snow, at 12,500 feet; the east gradually slopes up to the two snowy domes seen from Lachoong; the

bed of the valley is alternately a flat lake-bed, in which the river meanders at the rate of three and a half miles an hour, and sudden

descents, cumbered with old moraines, over which it rushes in sheets of Loam. Silver-firs ascend nearly to 13,000 feet, where they are

replaced by large junipers, sixty feet high: up the valley Chango

Khang is seen, with a superb glacier descending to about 14,000 feet on its south

flank. Enormous masses of rock were continually precipitated from the west side, close to the shed in which I had taken up my quarters,

keeping my people in constant alarm, and causing a great commotion

among the yaks, dogs, and ponies. On the opposite side of the river is a deep gorge; in which an immense glacier descends lower than any I have seen in Sikkim. I made several attempts to reach it by the

gully of its discharging stream, but was always foiled by the rocks and dense jungle of pines, rhododendron, and dwarf holly.

The snow-banks on the face of the dome-shaped mountain appearing

favourable for ascertaining the position of the level of perpetual

snow, I ascended to them on the 6th of September, and found the mean elevation along an even, continuous, and gradual slope, with a full south-west exposure, to be 15,985 feet by barometer, and 15,816 feet by boiling-point. These beds of snow, however broad and convex,

cannot nevertheless be distinguished from glaciers: they occupy, it is true, mountain slopes, and do not fill hollows (like glaciers

commonly so called), but they display the ribboned structure of ice, and being viscous fluids, descend at a rate and to a distance

depending on the slope, and on the amount of annual accumulation

behind. Their termination must therefore be far below that point at which all the snow that falls melts, which is the theoretical line of perpetual snow. Before returning I attempted to proceed northwards to the great glacier, hoping to descend by its lateral moraine, but a

heavy snow-storm drove me down to Yeumtong.

Some hot-springs burst from the bank of the Lachen a mile or so below the village: they are used as baths, the patient remaining three days at a time in them, only retiring to eat in a little shed close by.

The discharge amounts to a few gallons per minute; the temperature at the source is 112.6 degrees, and 106 degrees in the bath.* [This

water boiled at 191.6 degrees, the same at which snow-water and that of the river did; giving an elevation of 11,730 feet. Observations on the mineral constituents of the water will be found in the Appendix.]

The water has a slightly saline taste; it is colourless, but emits

bubbles of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, blackening silver. A cold

spring (temperature 42 degrees) emerged close by, and the Lachoong

not ten yards off, was 47 degrees to 50 degrees. A conferva grows in the hot water, and the garnets are worn out of the gneiss rock

exposed to its action.

The Singtam Soubah had been very sulky since leaving Choongtam, and I could scarcely get a drop of milk or a slice of curd here. I had to take him to task severely for sanctioning the flogging of one of my men; a huntsman, who had offered me his services at Choongtam, and

who was a civil, industrious fellow, though he had procured me little besides a huge monkey, which had nearly bitten off the head of his

best dog. I had made a point of consulting the Soubah before hiring him, for fear of accidents; but this did not screen him from the

jealousy of the Choongtam Lama, who twice flogged him in the Goompa with rattans (with the Soubah's consent), alleging that he had

quitted his service for mine. My people knew of this, but were afraid to tell me, which the poor fellow did himself.

The Lachoong Phipun visited me on the 7tb of September: he had

officiously been in Tibet to hear what the Tibetan people would say to my going to Donkia, and finding them supremely indifferent,

returned to be my guide. A month's provision for ten men having

arrived from Dorjiling, I left Yeumtong the following day for Momay Samdong, the loftiest yak grazing station in Sikkim (Palung being too cold for yaks), and within a day's journey of the Donkia pass.

The valley remains almost level for several miles, the road

continuing along the east bank of the Lachen. Shoots of stones

descend from the ravines, all of a white fine-grained granite,

stained red with a minute conferva, which has been taken by Himalayan travellers for red snow;* [Red snow was never found in the Antarctic regions during Sir James Ross's South Polar voyage; nor do I know any authentic record of its having been seen in the Himalaya.] a

phenomenon I never saw in Sikkim.

At a fork of the valley several miles above Yeumtong, and below the great glacier of Chango Khang, the ancient moraines are prodigious, much exceeding any I have elsewhere seen, both in extent, in the size of the boulders, and in the height to which the latter are piled on one another. Many boulders I measured were twenty yards across, and some even forty; and the chaotic scene they presented baffles all

description: they were scantily clothed with stunted silver firs.

Beyond this, the path crosses the river, and ascends rapidly over a mile of steeply sloping landslip, composed of angular fragments of

granite, that are constantly falling from above, and are extremely

dangerous. At 14,000 feet, trees and shrubs cease, willow and

honeysuckle being the last; and thence onward the valley is bleak,

open, and stony, with lofty rocky mountains on either side. The south wind brought a cold drizzling rain, which numbed us, and two of the lads who had last come up from Dorjiling were seized with a remittent fever, originally contracted in the hot valleys; luckily we found

some cattle-sheds, in which I left them, with two men to attend

on them.

Momay Samdong is situated in a broad part of the Lachoong valley,

where three streams meet; it is on the west of Chango Khang, and is six miles south-east of Kinchinjhow, and seven south-west of Donkia: it is in the same latitude as Palung, but scarcely so lofty. The mean of fifty-six barometrical observations contemporaneous with Calcutta makes it 15,362 feet above the sea; nearly the elevation of Lacheepia (near the Tunkra pass), from which, however, its scenery and

vegetation entirely differ.

I pitched my tent close to a little shed, at the gently sloping base of a mountain that divided the Lachoong river from a western

tributary. It was a wild and most exposed spot: long stony mountains, grassy on the base near the river; distant snowy peaks, stupendous

precipices, moraines, glaciers, transported boulders, and rocks

rounded by glacial action, formed the dismal landscape which

everywhere met the view. There was not a bush six inches high, and

the only approach to woody plants were minute creeping willows and

dwarf rhododendrons, with a very few prostrate junipers

and Ephedra.

The base of the spur was cut into broad flat terraces, composed of

unstratified sand, pebbles, and boulders; the remains, doubtless, of an enormously thick glacial deposit. The terracing is as difficult to be accounted for in this valley as in that of Yangma (East Nepal);

both valleys being far too broad, and descending too rapidly to admit of the hypothesis of their having been blocked up in the lower part, and the upper filled with large lakes.* [The formation of small

lakes, however, between moraines and the sides of the valleys they

occupy, or between two successively formed moraines (as I have

elsewhere mentioned), will account for very extensive terraced areas of this kind; and it must be borne in mind that when the Momay valley was filled with ice, the breadth of its glacier at this point must

have been twelve miles, and it must have extended east and west from Chango Khang across the main valley, to beyond Donkia. Still the

great moraines are wanting at this particular point, and though

atmospheric action and the rivers have removed perhaps 200 feet of

glacial shingle, they can hardly have destroyed a moraine of rocks, large enough to block up the valley.] Another tributary falls into

the Lachoong at Momay, which leads eastwards up to an enormous

glacier that descends from Donkia. Snowy mountains rise nearly all

round it: those on its south and east divide Sikkim from the Phari

province in Tibet; those on the north terminate in a forked or cleft peak, which is a remarkable and conspicuous feature from Momay.

This, which I have called forked Donkia,* [Its elevation by my

observations is about 21,870 feet.] is the termination of a

magnificent amphitheatre of stupendous snow-clad precipices,

continuously upwards of 20,000 feet high, that forms the east flank of the upper Lachoong. From Donkia top again, the mountains sweep

round to the westward, rising into fingered peaks of extraordinary

magnificence; and thence --still running west--dip to 18,500 feet,

forming the Donkia pass, and rise again as the great mural mass of

Kinchinjhow. This girdle of mountains encloses the head waters of the Lachoong, which rises in