From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

Perhaps the Himalayas are less impressive than the Alps in proportion, because the snow line is so much higher. In Switzerland we reach the line of perpetual snow at 8,900 feet, so that the Jungfrau, which is less than 14,000 feet, has a full mile of snow covering her virgin breast. But here the traveller must ascend 18,000 feet, nearly two miles higher, before he comes to the line of perpetual snow. It is considered a great achievement of the most daring Alpine climbers to reach the top of the Jungfrau or the Matterhorn, but here many of the passes are higher than the summit of either. Dr. Bellew, who accompanied the expedition of Sir Douglas Forsyth three years since to Yarkund and Kashgar, told me they crossed passes 19,000 feet high, nearly 4,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. He said they did not need a guide, for that the path was marked by bones of men and beasts that had perished by the way; the bodies lying where they fell, for no beast or bird lives at that far height, neither vulture nor jackal, while the intense cold preserved the bodies from decay.

But the Himalayas are not all heights, but heights and depths. The mountains are divided by valleys. From where we stand the eye sweeps over the tops of nine or ten separate ranges, with valleys between, in which are scattered hundreds of villages. The enterprising traveller may descend into these deep places of the earth, and make his toilsome way over one range after another, till he reaches the snows. But he will find it a fourteen days' march. My companion had once spent six weeks in a missionary tour among these villages.

Wilson, the author of "The Abode of Snow,"[5] who spent months in travelling through the Inner Himalayas, from Thibet to Cashmere, makes a comparison of these mountains with the Alps. There are some advantages to be claimed for the latter. Not only are they more accessible, but combine in a smaller space more variety. Their sides are more generally clothed with forests, which are mirrored in those beautiful sheets of water that give such a charm both to Swiss and Scottish scenery. But in the Himalayas there is hardly a lake to be seen until one enters the Vale of Cashmere. Then the Alps have more of the human element, in the picturesque Swiss villages. The traveller looks down from snow-covered mountains into valleys with meadows and houses and the spires of churches. But in the Himalayas there is not a sign of civilization, and hardly of habitation. Occasionally a village or a Buddhist monastery may stand out picturesquely on the top of a hill, but generally the mountains are given up to utter desolation.

"But," says Wilson, "when all these admissions in favor of Switzerland are made, the Himalayas still remain unsurpassed, and even unapproached, as regards all the wilder and grander features of mountain scenery. There is nothing in the Alps which can afford even a faint idea of the savage desolation and appalling sublimity of many of the Himalayan scenes. Nowhere have the faces of the rocks been so scarred and riven by the nightly action of frost and the midday floods from melting snow. In almost every valley we see places where whole peaks or sides of great mountains have very recently come shattering down."

This constant action of the elements sometimes carves the sides of the mountains into castellated forms, like the cañons of the Yellowstone and the Colorado:

"Gigantic mural precipices, bastions, towers, castles, citadels, and spires rise up thousands of feet in height, mocking in their immensity and grandeur the puny efforts of human art; while yet higher the domes of pure white snow and glittering spires of ice far surpass in perfection, as well as in immensity, all the Moslem musjids and minars."

But more impressive than the most fantastic or imposing forms are the vast spaces of untrodden snow, and the awful solitudes and silences of the upper air. No wonder that the Hindoos made this inaccessible region the dwelling-place of their gods. It is their Kylas, or Heaven. The peak of Badrinath, 24,000 feet high, is the abode of Vishnu; and that of Kedarnath, 23,000, is the abode of Shiva—two of the Hindoo Trinity. Nunda Davee (the goddess Nunda) is the wife of Shiva. Around these summits gathers the whole Hindoo mythology. Yonder, where we see a slight hollow in the mountains, is Gungootree, where the Ganges takes its rise, issuing from a great glacier by a fissure, or icy cavern, worn underneath, called the Cow's Mouth. Farther to the west is Jumnootree, the source of the Jumna. Both these places are very sacred in the eyes of the Hindoos, and as near to them as any structure can be placed, are shrines, which are visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all parts of India.

Thus these snowy heights are to the Hindoo Mount Sinai and Calvary in one. Here is not only the summit where God gave the law, but where God dwells evermore, and out of which issue the sacred rivers, which are like the rivers of the water of life flowing out of the throne of God; or like the blood of atonement, to wash away the sins of the world.

But the associations of this spot are not all of Hindooism and idolatry. True, we are in a wintry region, but there is an Alpine flower that grows at the foot of the snows. Close to Lal Tiba I observed a large tree of rhododendrons, in full bloom, although it was February, their scarlet blossoms contrasting with the snow which had fallen on them the night before. But the fairest blossom on that Alpine height is a Christian church. Lal Tiba itself belongs to the Presbyterian mission, and adjoining it is the house of the missionaries. On the ridge is a mission church, built chiefly by the indefatigable efforts of Mr. Woodside. It is a modest, yet tasteful building, standing on a point of rock, which is in full view of the Snowy Range, and overlooks the whole mountain landscape. It was like a banner in the sky—that white church—standing on such a height, as if it were in the clouds, looking across at the mighty range beyond, and smiling at the eternal snows!

The hardest thing in going round the world, is to break away from friends. Not the friends we have left in America, for those we may hope to see again, but the friends made along the way. One meets so many kind people, and enters so many hospitable homes, that to part from them is an ever-renewing sorrow and regret. We have found many such homes in India, but none in which we would linger more than in this lovely Vale of Dehra Doon.