CHAPTER XI.
Ascend Nango mountain—Moraines—Vegetation—Honey-combed surface
of snow—Perpetual snow—Top of pass—View—Elevation—Distance
of sound—Plants—Temperature—Scenery—Cliffs of granite and hurled
boulders — Camp — Descent — Pheasants — Larch — Distribution of
Deodar—Kambachen village—Cultivation—Moraines in valley, distribution
of—Picturesque lake-beds, and their vegetation—Tibetan
sheep and goats—Gryptogramma crispa—Ascent to Choonjerma pass
—View of Junnoo—Rocks of its summit—Misty ocean—Nepal peaks
—Top of pass—Temperature, and observations—Gorgeous sunset—
Descent to Yalloong valley—Lose path—Night scenes—Musk deer.
We passed the night a few miles below the great
moraine, in a pine-wood (alt. 11,000 feet) opposite the
gorge which leads to the Kambachen or Nango pass,
over the south shoulder of the mountain of that name :
it is situated on a ridge dividing the Yangma river
from that of Kambachen, which latter falls into the
Tamhur opposite Lelyp.
The road crosses the Yangma (which is about fifteen
feet wide), and ascends steeply to the south-east, over
a moraine, clothed with a dense thicket of rhododendrons,
mountain-ash, maples, pine, birch, juniper, &c.
The ground was covered with silvery flakes of birch
hark, and that of Bhododendron Hodgsoni, which is
as delicate as tissue-paper, and of a pale flesh-colour.
I had not before met with this species, and was
astonished at the beauty of its foliage, which was of a
bright green, with leaves sixteen inches long.
Beyond the region of trees and large shrubs alpine
rhododendrons filled the valley, growing with Potentilla,
Honeysuckle, Polygonum, and dwarf juniper. The
peak of Nango seemed to tower over the gorge, rising
behind some black, splintered cliffs, sprinkled with
snow; narrow defiles opened up through these cliffs to
blue glaciers, and their mouths were invariably closed
by beds of moraines, curving outwards from either flank
in concentric ridges.
We followed a valley to the south-east, so as to turn
the flank of the peak; our road leading over beds of
October snow, and over plashy ground, from its melt-
ing. Sometimes the path lay close to the black
precipices on our right, under which the snow was
deep; and we dragged ourselves along, grasping every
prominence of the rock with our numbed fingers.
At a little below 15,000 feet, we reached enormous
flat beds of -snow, which were said to be perpetual,
but now deepened by the October fall. They were continuous,
and like all the snow I saw at this season, the
surface was honeycombed into thin plates, the intervening
fissures being about six inches deep. A thick
mist here overtook us, and this, with the great difficulty
of picking our way, rendered the ascent very fatiguing.
Being sanguine about obtaining a good view, I found
it almost impossible to keep my temper under the
aggravations of pain in the forehead, lassitude, oppression
of breathing, a dense drizzling fog, a keen wind, a
slippery footing, where I was stumbling at every few