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

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 grass 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 masses 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 dewpoint 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.

Illustration—KANGLACHEM PASS.

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 pass, 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 snowbeds 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 pass 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 pass 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 pass 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 dewpoint 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 principal 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. Lassitude, 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 accumulation 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 accumulations. Glaciers from each valley, meeting at the fork, where their depth would be 700 feet of ice, would both deposit the necessary accumulation along the flanks of the great valley, and also throw a barrier across it. The melting waters of such glaciers would accumulate 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 shingle 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 accumulations 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 compass, and angles by means of a pocket sextant. 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.

Illustration—SKULLS OF OVIS AMMON.