illustrated by those of Donkia p a ss; they served
chiefly to perfect my map, measure the surrounding
peaks, and determine the elevation reached by plants;
all of which were slow operations, the weather during
this month being so bad that X rarely returned dry to
my te n t; fog and drizzle, if not sleet and snow, coming
• on every day, without exception.
I made frequent excursions to the great glacier of
Kinchinjhow. Its valley is about four miles long,
broad and flat; Chango-Khangrears its blue and white
cliffs 4,500 feet above its west flank, and throws down
avalanches of stones and snow into the valley. Hot-
springs burst from the ground near some granite rocks
on its floor, about 16,000 feet above the sea, and only
a mile below the glacier, and the water collects in
pools: its temperature is 110°, and in places 116°, or
4 hotter than that of the Yeumtong hot-springs, though
4000 feet higher, and of precisely the same character.
A. few plants make the neighbourhood of the hot-springs
a little oasis, and the large marmot is common,
uttering its sharp, chirping squeak.
The terminal moraine is about 500 feet high, quite
barren, and thrown obliquely across the valley, from
north-east to south-west, completely hiding the glacier.
From its top successive smaller parallel ridges
(indicating the periodic retirements of the glacier) lead
down to the ice, which must have sunk several hundred
feet. This glacier descends from IQnchinjhow,
the huge cliff of whose eastern extremity dips into it.
The surface, less than half a mile wide, is exceedingly
undulated, and covered with large pools of water,
ninety feet deep, and beds of snow, and is deeply
corroded; gigantic blocks are perched on pinnacles of
ice on its surface, and the gravel cones are often twenty
feet high. Between the moraine and the west flank of
the valley is a large lake, with terraced banks, whose
bottom is several hundred feet above that of the valley;
it is half a mile long, and a quarter broad, and fed
partly by glaciers from Chango-Khang and Sebolah,
and partly by filtration through the lateral moraine.
GNEISS-BLOCK WITH GRANITE BANDS, ON THE KINCHINJHOW GLACIER.