steps, and icy-cold wet feet, hands, and eyelids; the
latter, odd as it sounds, I found a very disagreeable
accompaniment of continued raw cold wind.
After an hour and a halfs toilsome ascent, I
reached the crest, crossing a broad shelf of snow
between two rocky eminences : the ridge was unsnowed
a little way down the east flank; this was, in a great
measure, due to the eastern exposure being the more
sunny, to the prevalence of the warm south-east winds
that blow up the Kambachen valley, and to the fact
that the great snow-beds on the west side are drifted
accumulations. The mist cleared off, and I had a
partial, though limited, view. To the north the blue
peak of Nango was stiff 2000 feet above me, its snowy
mantle faffing in great sweeps and curves into glacier?
bound valleys. The Yangma valley was quite hidden,
but to the eastward the view across the stupendous
gorge of the Kambachen, 5000 feet below, to the waste
of snow, ice, and rock, piled in confusion along the
top of the range of Junnoo and Choonjerma, parallel
to this but higher, was very grand indeed: this I
was to cross in two days, and its appearance was such,
that my guide doubted the possibility of our doing it.
A third and fourth mountain mass (unseen) lay between
me and Sikkim, divided by valleys as deep as those of
Yangma and Kambachen.
Having hung up my instruments, I ascended a few
hundred feet to some naked rocks, to the northward,
when I was struck with the distance to which the voice
was carried, I could distinctly hear every word spoken
300 to 400 yards off, and did not raise my voice when
I asked one of the men, at that distance, to bring me
a hammer.
The few plants about were mostly small tufted
Arenarias and woolly Compositse, with a thick-rooted
Umbellifer that spread its short, fleshy leaves and
branches flat on the ground; the root was very
aromatic, but wedged close in the rock. The temperature
at 4 p .m . was 23°, and bitterly cold; the
elevation was 15,770 feet.
The descent was to a broad, open valley, into which
dipped tremendous precipices, which reared their heads
in splintered snowy peaks. At their bases were shoots
of debris fully 700 feet high, sloping at a steep angle.
Enormous masses of rock, detached by the action of
the frost and ice, were scattered over the bottom of the
valley; they had been precipitated from above, and
gaining impetus in their descent, had been hurled to
almost inconceivable distances. All were of a very
white, fine-grained crystallized granite, with clean, sharp-
fractured edges, while the weathered surface of each
block was black, and covered with moss and lichens.
The material of which they were composed was so
hard that I found it difficult to detach a specimen.
Darkness had already come on, and the coolies
being far behind, we encamped by the light of the
moon shining through a thin fog, where we first found
dwarf-juniper for fuel, at 13,500 feet.
Having no tent-poles, I had some difficulty in getting
my blankets arranged as a shelter, which was done by
making them slant from the side of a boulder, on the
top of which one end was kept by heavy stones ; under
M 2