Himalayan Journals, vol 1 by J. D. Hooker (best thriller books to read txt) 📕

I awoke my servant (always a work of difficulty), and with some trouble ejected the visitors, happily without setting the house on fire. I heard them toppling head over heels down the stair, which I afterwards had drawn up to prevent further intrusion, and in spite of their drunken orgies, was soon lulled to sleep again by the music of the roaring river.

On the 29th November, I continued my course north up the Yangma valley, which after five miles opened considerably, the trees disappearing, and the river flowing more tranquilly, and through a broader valley, when above 11,000 feet elevation. The Guobah of Wallanchoon overtook us on the road; on his way, he said, to collect the revenues at Yangma village, but in reality to see what I was about. He owns five considerable villages, and is said to pay a tax of 6000 rupees (600 pounds) to the Rajah of Nepal: this is no doubt a great exaggeration, but the revenues of such a position, near a pass frequented almost throughout the year, must be considerable.

Every yak going and coming is said to pay 1s., and every horse 4s.; cattle, sheep, ponies, land, and wool are all taxed; he exports also quantities of timber to Tibet, and various articles from the plains of India. He joined my party and halted where I did, had his little Chinese rug spread, and squatted cross-legged on it, whilst his servant prepared his brick tea with salt, butter, and soda, of which he partook, snuffed, smoked, rose up, had all his traps repacked, and was off again.

We encamped at a most remarkable place: the valley was broad, with little vegetation but stunted tree-junipers: rocky snow-topped mountains rose on either side, bleak, bare, and rugged; and in front, close above my tent, was a gigantic wall of rocks, piled—as if by the Titans—completely across the valley, for about threequarters of a mile. This striking phenomenon had excited all my curiosity on first obtaining a view of it. The path, I found, led over it, close under its west end, and wound amongst the enormous detached fragments of which it was formed, and which were often eighty feet square: all were of gneiss and schist, with abundance of granite in blocks and veins. A superb view opened from the top, revealing its nature to be a vast moraine, far below the influence of any existing glaciers, but which at some antecedent period had been thrown across by a glacier descending to 10,000 feet, from a lateral valley on the east flank.

Standing on the top, and looking south, was the Yangma valley (up which I had come), gradually contracting to a defile, girdled by snow-tipped mountains, whose rocky flanks mingled with the black pine forest below. Eastward the moraine stretched south of the lateral valley, above which towered the snowy peak of Nango, tinged rosy red, and sparkling in the rays of the setting sun: blue glaciers peeped from every gulley on its side, but these were 2000 to 3000 feet above this moraine; they were small too, and their moraines were mere gravel, compared with this. Many smaller consecutive moraines, also, were evident along the bottom of that lateral valley, from this great one up to the existing glaciers. Looking up the Yangma was a flat grassy plain, hemmed in by mountains, and covered with other stupendous moraines, which rose ridge behind ridge, and cut off the view of all but the mountain tops to the north. The river meandered through the grassy plain (which appeared a mile and a half broad at the utmost, and perhaps as long), and cut through the great moraine on its eastern side, just below the junction of the stream from the glacial valley, which, at the lower part of its course, flowed over a broad steep shingle bed.

Illustration—ANCIENT MORAINE THROWN ACROSS THE YANGMA VALLEY, EAST

NEPAL (Elevn. 11,000 ft.)

I descended to my camp, full of anxious anticipations for the morrow; while the novelty of the scene, and its striking character, the complexity of the phenomena, the lake-bed, the stupendous ice-deposited moraine, and its remoteness from any existing ice, the broad valley and open character of the country, were all marked out as so many problems suddenly conjured up for my unaided solution, and kept me awake for many hours. I had never seen a glacier or moraine on land before, but being familiar with sea ice and berg transport, from voyaging in the South Polar regions, I was strongly inclined to attribute the formation of this moraine to a period when a glacial ocean stood high on the Himalaya, made fiords of the valleys, and floated bergs laden with blocks from the lateral gulleys, which the winds and currents would deposit along certain lines. On the following morning I carried a barometer to the top of the moraine, which proved to be upwards of 700 feet above the floor of the valley, and 400 above the dry lake-bed which it bounded, and to which we descended on our route up the valley. The latter was grassy and pebbly, perfectly level, and quite barren, except a very few pines at the bases of the encircling mountains, and abundance of rhododendrons, Andromeda and juniper on the moraines. Isolated moraines occurred along both flanks of the valley, some higher than that I have described, and a very long one was thrown nearly across from the upper end of another lateral gulley on the east side, also leading up to the glaciers of Nango. This second moraine commenced a mile and a half above the first, and abutting on the east flank of the valley, stretched nearly across, and then curving round, ran down it, parallel to and near the west flank, from which it was separated by the Yangma river: it was abruptly terminated by a conical hill of boulders, round whose base the river flowed, entering the dry lake-bed from the west, and crossing it in a south-easterly direction to the western extremity of the great moraine.

The road, on its ascent to the second moraine, passed over an immense accumulation of glacial detritus at the mouth of the second lateral valley, entirely formed of angular fragments of gneiss and granite, loosely bound together by felspathic sand. The whole was disposed in concentric ridges radiating from the mouth of the valley, and descending to the flat; these were moraines in petto, formed by the action of winter snow and ice upon the loose debris. A stream flowed over this debris, dividing into branches before reaching the lake-bed, where its waters were collected, and whence it meandered southward to fall into the Yangma.

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 principal 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 northwest 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 accumulation, 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 distance that they were continuous; and very barren; there were no traces of fossils, nor could I assure myself of stratification. The accumulation 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.

Illustration—ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE YANGMA VALLEY.

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 grass, 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 dykes. 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, scraps 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 Lhassa, 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 passed 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 shore, 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 abutted 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 glass: it reminded me of the tarn in Glencoe. The reflected lofty peak of Nango appeared as if frozen deep down in its glassy bed, every snowy crest and ridge being