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

at 8000 feet, and the night was cold and clear. On the following morning I continued the ascent, alternately up steeps and along perfectly level shelves, on which were occasionally frozen pools, surrounded with dwarf juniper and rhododendrons. Across one I observed the track of a yak in the snow; it presented two ridges, probably from the long hair of this animal, which trails on the ground, sweeping the snow from the centre of its path. At 11,000 feet the snow lay deep and soft in the woods of silver fir, and the coolies waded through it with difficulty.

 

Enormous fractured boulders of gneiss were frequent over the whole of Mon Lepcha, from 7000 to 11,000 feet: they were of the same material as the rock in situ, and as unaccountable in their origin as the loose blocks on Dorjiling and Sinchul spurs at similar elevations, often cresting narrow ridges. I measured one angular detached block, forty feet high, resting on a steep narrow shoulder of the spur, in a position to which it was impossible it could have rolled; and it is equally difficult to suppose that glacial ice deposited it 4000 feet above the bottom of the gorge, except we conclude the valley to have been filled with ice to that depth. A glance at the map will show that Mon Lepcha is remarkably situated, opposite the face of Kinchinjunga, and at the great bend of the Ratong. Had that valley ever been filled with water during a glacial period, Mon Lepcha would have formed a promontory, and many floating bergs from Kinchin would have been stranded on its flank: but I nowhere observed these rocks to be of so fine a granite as I believe the upper rocks of Kinchin to be, and I consequently cannot advance even that far-fetched solution with much plausibility.

 

As I ascended, the rocks became more granitic, with large crystals of mica. The summit was another broad bare flat, elevated 13,080 feet, and fringed by a copse of rose, berberry, and very alpine rhododendrons: the Himalayan heather (_Adromeda fastigiata_) grew abundantly here, affording us good fuel.

 

The toilsome ascent through the soft snow and brushwood delayed the coolies, who scarcely accomplished five miles in the day. Some of them having come up by dark, I prepared to camp on the mountain-top, strewing thick masses of Andromeda and moss (which latter hung in great tufts from the bushes) on the snow; my blankets bad not arrived, but there was no prospect of a snow-storm.

 

The sun was powerful when I reached the summit, and I was so warm that I walked about barefoot on the frozen snow without inconvenience, preferring it to continuing in wet stockings: the temperature at the time was 29.5 degrees, with a brisk south-east moist wind, and the dew point 22.8 degrees.

 

The night was magnificent, brilliant starlight, with a pale mist over the mountains: the thermometer fell to 15.5 degrees at 7.30 p.m., and one laid upon wood with its bulb freely exposed, sank to 7.5 degrees: the snow sparkled with broad flakes of hoar-frost in the full moon, which was so bright, that I recorded my observations by its light.

Owing to the extreme cold of radiation, I passed a very uncomfortable night. The minimum thermometer fell to 1 degrees in shade.* [At sunrise the temperature was 11.5 degrees; that of grass, cleared on the previous day from snow, and exposed to the sky, 6.5 degrees; that on wool, 2.2 degrees; and that on the surface of the snow, 0.7

degrees.] The sky was clear; and every rock, leaf, twig, blade of grass, and the snow itself, were covered with broad rhomboidal plates of hoar-frost, nearly one-third of an inch across: while the metal scale of the thermometer instantaneously blistered my tongue. As the sun rose, the light reflected from these myriads of facets had a splendid effect.

 

Before sunrise the atmosphere was still, and all but cloudless.

To the south-east were visible the plains of India, at least 140

miles distant; where, as usual, horizontal layers of leaden purple vapour obscured the horizon: behind these the sun rose majestically, instantly dispersing them, while a thin haze spread over all the intervening mountains, from its slanting beams reaching me through otherwise imperceptible vapours: these, as the sun mounted higher, again became invisible, though still giving that transparency to the atmosphere and brilliant definition of the distances, so characteristic of a damp, yet clear day.

 

Mon Lepcha commands a most extensive view of Sikkim, southward to Dorjiling. At my feet lay the great and profound valley of the Ratong, a dark gulf of vegetation. Looking northward, the eye followed that river to the summit of Kinchinjunga (distant eighteen miles), which fronts the beholder as Mont Blanc does when seen from the mountains on the opposite side of the valley of Chamouni. To the east are the immense precipices and glaciers of Pundim, and on the west those of Kubra, forming great supporters to the stupendous mountain between them. Mon Lepcha itself is a spur running south-east from the Kubra shoulder: it is very open, and covered with rounded hills for several miles further north, terminating in a conspicuous conical black hummock* [This I have beau told is the true Kubra; and the great snowy mountain behind it, which I here, in conformity with the Dorjiling nomenclature, call Kubra, has no name, being considered a part of Kinchin.] called Gubroo, of 15,000 feet elevation, which presents a black cliff to the south.

 

Kinchinjunga rises in three heads, of nearly equal height,* [The eastern and western tops, are respectively 27,826 and 28,177 feet above the level of the sea.] which form a line running northwest.

It exposes many white or grey rocks, bare of snow, and disposed in strata* [I am aware that the word strata is inappropriate here; the appearance of stratification or bedding, if it indicate any structure of the rock, being, I cannot doubt, due to that action which gives parallel cleavage planes to granite in many parts of the world, and to which the so-called lamination or foliation of slate and gneiss is supposed by many geologists to be due. It is not usual to find this structure so uniformly and conspicuously developed through large masses of granite, as it appeared to me to be on the sides of Kinchinjunga and on the top of Junnoo, as seen from the Choonjerma pass (Chapter XI, plate); but it is sometimes very conspicuous, and nowhere more than in the descent of the Grimsel towards Meyringen, where the granite on the east flank of that magnificent gorge seems cleft into parallel nearly vertical strata.] sloping to the west; the colour of all which above 20,000 feet, and the rounded knobbed form of the summit, suggest a granitic formation. Lofty snowed ridges project from Kubra into the Ratong valley, presenting black precipices of stratified rocks to the southward. Pundim has a very grand appearance; being eight miles distant, and nearly 9000 feet above Mon Lepcha, it subtends an angle of 12 degrees; while Kinchin top, though 15,000 feet higher than Mon Lepcha, being eighteen miles distant, rises only 9 degrees 30 minutes above the true horizon: these angular heights are too small to give much grandeur and apparent elevation to mountains, however lofty; nor would they do so in this case, were it not that the Ratong valley which intervenes, is seen to be several thousand feet lower, and many degrees below the real horizon.

 

Illustration—KINCHINJUNGA AND PUNDIM FROM MON LEPCHA.

 

Pundim has a tremendous precipice to the south, which, to judge from its bareness of snow, must be nearly perpendicular; and it presented a superb geological section. The height of this precipice I found by angles with a pocket sextant to be upwards of 3,400 feet, and that of its top to be 21,300 above the sea, and consequently only 715 feet less than that of the summit of Pundim itself (which is 22,015 feet).

This cliff is of black stratified rocks, sloping to the west, and probably striking northwest; permeated from top to bottom by veins of white granite, disposed in zigzag lines, which produce a contortion of the gneiss, and give it a marbled appearance. The same structure may be seen in miniature on the transported blocks which abound in the Sikkim rivers; where veins of finely grained granite are forced in all directions through the gneiss, and form parallel seams or beds between the laminae of that rock, united by transverse seams, and crumpling up the gneiss itself, like the crushed leaves of a book. The summit of Pundim itself is all of white rock, rounded in shape, and forming a cap to the gneiss, which weathers into precipices.

 

A succession of ridges, 14,000 to 18,000 feet high, presented a line of precipices running south from Pundim for several miles: immense granite veins are exposed on their surfaces, and they are capped by stratified rocks, sloping to the east, and apparently striking to the northwest, which, being black, contrast strongly with the white granite beneath them: these ridges, instead of being round-topped, are broken into splintered crags, behind which rises the beautiful conical peak of Nursing, 19,139 feet above the sea, eight miles distant, and subtending an angle of 8 degrees 30 minutes.

 

At the foot of these precipices was a very conspicuous series of lofty moraines, round whose bases the Ratong wound; these appeared of much the same height, rising several hundred feet above the valley: they were comparatively level-topped, and had steep shelving rounded sides.

 

I have been thus particular in describing the upper Ratong valley, because it drains the south face of the loftiest mountain on the globe; and I have introduced angular heights, and been precise in my details, because the vagueness with which all terms are usually applied to the apparent altitude and steepness of mountains and precipices, is apt to give false impressions. It is essential to attend to such points where scenery of real interest and importance is to be described. It is customary to speak of peaks as towering in the air, which yet subtend an angle of very few degrees; of almost precipitous ascents, which, when measured, are found to be slopes of 18 degrees or 20 degrees; and of cliffs as steep and stupendous, which are inclined at a very moderate angle.

 

The effect of perspective is as often to deceive in details as to give truth to general impressions; and those accessories are sometimes wanting in nature, which, when supplied by art, give truth to the landscape. Thus, a streak of clouds adds height to a peak which should appear lofty, but which scarcely rises above the true horizon; and a belt of mist will sunder two snowy mountains which, though at very different distances, for want of a play of light and shade on their dazzling surfaces, and from the extreme transparency of the air in lofty regions, appear to be at the same distance from the observer.

 

The view to the southward from Mon Lepcha, including the country between the sea-like plains of India and the loftiest mountain on the globe, is very grand, and neither wanting in variety nor in beauty.

From the deep valleys choked with tropical luxuriance to the scanty yak pasturage on the heights above, seems but a step at the first coup-d’oceil, but resolves itself on a closer inspection into five belts: 1, palm and plantain; 2, oak and laurel; 3, pine; 4, rhododendron and grass; and 5, rock and snow. From the bed of the Ratong, in which grow palms with screw-pine and plantain, it is only seven miles in a direct line to the perpetual ice. From the plains of India, or outer Himalaya, one may behold snowy peaks rise in the distance behind a foreground of tropical