lateral valley, above which towered the snowy peak of
Nango, tinged rosy red, and sparkling in the rays of
the setting su n : 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 the lateral valley, from this great one up
to the existing glaciers. Looking up the Yangma
to the north, there appeared 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. The river
meandered through the plain (which was about 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 gravel-bed.
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 moraine, and its remoteness
from any existing ice, the broad valley and open
character of the country, were all so many problems
conjured up for my unaided solution, and kept me
awake for hours. I had never seen a glacier or
moraine before, but being familiar with sea ice and
berg transport, during my voyages in the South Polar
regions, I was strongly inclined to attribute the
formation of this moraine to a period when a glacial
ctAA1, u a , o n t h e H im a l a y a , m a d e f io r d s o f the
valleys a n d f lo a t e d bergs l a d e n with blocks f r o m the
S X i ^ ™ d a “ d c u r r e n t s W O T l 4
I carried a bate
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
Z t r e n d e d on our route up the valley. Isolated
moraines occurred along both flanks, and a very ong
one was thrown nearly across from the upper end
of another 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 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 a c c u m u l a t io n o f angular
fragments, loosely bound together by felspathic sand.
A stream flowed over this débris, dividing into many
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, of another stony and desolate lake-bed,