The moraines were all accumulated in a sort of delta, through which the lateral river debouched into the Kambachen, and were all deposited more or less parallel to the course of the lateral valley, but curving outwards from its mouth. The village-flat, or terrace, continued level to the first moraine, which had been thrown down on the upper or north side of the lateral valley, on whose and curving steep flanks it abutted, and curving outwards seemed to encircle the village-flat on the south and west; where it dipped into the river. This was crossed at the height of about 100 feet, by a stony path, leading to the bed of the rapid torrent flowing through shingle and boulders, beyond which was another moraine, 250 feet high, and parallel to it a third gigantic one.
Ascending the great moraine at a place where it overhung the main river, I had a good coup-a’œil of the whole. The view south-east up the glacial valley—(represented in the accompanying cut)—to the snowy peaks south of Junnoo, was particularly grand, and most interesting from the precision with which one great distant existing glacier was marked by two waving parallel lines of lateral moraines, which formed, as it were, a vast raised gutter, or channel, ascending from perhaps 16,000 feet elevation, till it was hidden behind a spur in the valley. With a telescope I could descry many similar smaller glaciers, with huge accumulations of shingle at their terminations; but this great one was beautifully seen by the naked eye, and formed a very curious feature in the landscape.
Between the moraines, near my tent, the soil was perfectly level, and consisted of little lake-beds strewn with gigantic boulders, and covered with hard turf of grass and sedge, and little bushes of dwarf rhododendron and prostrate juniper, as trim as if they had been clipped. Altogether these formed the most picturesque little nooks it was possible to conceive; and they exhibited the withered remains of so many kinds of primrose, gentian, anemone, potentilla, orchis, saxifrage, parnassia, campanula, and pedicularis, that in summer they must be perfect gardens of wild flowers. Around each plot of a few acres was the grand ice-transported girdle of stupendous rocks, many from 50 to 100 feet long, crested with black tabular-branched silver firs, conical deep green tree-junipers, and feathery larches; whilst amongst the blocks grew a profusion of round masses of evergreen rhododendron bushes. Beyond were stupendous frowning cliffs, beneath which the river roared like thunder; and looking up the glacial valley, the setting sun was bathing the expanse of snow in the most delicate changing tints, pink, amber, and gold.
The boulders forming the moraine were so enormous and angular, that I had great difficulty in ascending it. I saw some pheasants feeding on the black berries of the juniper, but where the large rhododendrons grew amongst the rocks I found it impossible to penetrate. The largest of the moraines is piled to upwards of 1000 feet against the south flank of the lateral valley, and stretched far up it beyond my camp, which was in a grove of silver firs. A large flock of sheep and goats, laden with salt, overtook us here on their route from Wallanchoon to Yalloong. The sheep I observed to feed on the Rhododendron Thomsoni and campylocarpum. On the roots of one of the latter species a parasitical Broom-rape (Orobanche) grew abundantly; and about the moraines were more mosses, lichens, etc., than I have elsewhere seen in the loftier Himalaya, encouraged no doubt by the dampness of this grand mountain gorge, which is so hemmed in that the sun never reaches it until four or five hours after it has gilded the overhanging peaks.
December 5.—The morning was bright and clear, and we left early for the Choonjerma pass. I had hoped the route would be up the magnificent glacier-girdled valley in which we had encamped; but it lay up another, considerably south of it, and to which we crossed, ascending the rocky moraine, in the clefts of which grew abundance of a common Scotch fern, Cryptogramma crispa!
The clouds early commenced gathering, and it was curious to watch their rapid formation in coalescing streaks, which became first cirrhi, and then stratus, being apparently continually added to from below by the moisture-bringing southerly wind. Ascending a lofty spur, 1000 feet above the valley, against which the moraine was banked, I found it to be a distinct anticlinal axis. The pass, bearing north-west, and the valley we had descended on the previous day, rose immediately over the curved strata of quartz, topped by the glacier-crowned mountain of Nango, with four glaciers descending from its perpetual snows. The stupendous cliffs on its flanks, under which I had camped on the previous night, were very grand, but not more so than those which dipped into the chasm of the Kambachen below. Looking up the valley of the latter, was another wilderness of ice full of enormous moraines, round the bases of which the river wound.
Ascending, we reached an open grassy valley, and overtook the Tibetans who had preceded us, and who had halted here to feed their sheep. A good-looking girl of the party came to ask me for medicine for her husband’s eyes, which had suffered from snow-blindness: she brought me a present of snuff, and carried a little child, stark naked, yet warm from the powerful rays of the sun, at nearly 14,000 feet elevation, in December! I prescribed for the man, and gave the mother a bright farthing to hang round the child’s neck, which delighted the party. My watch was only wondered at; but a little spring measuring-tape that rolled itself up, struck them dumb, and when I threw it on the ground with the tape out, the mother shrieked and ran away, while the little savage howled after her.
Above, the path up the ascent was blocked with snowbeds, and for several miles we alternately scrambled among rocks and over slippery slopes, to the top of the first ridge, there being two to cross. The first consisted of a ridge of rocks running east and west from a superb sweep of snowy mountains to the north-west, which presented a chaotic scene of blue glacial ice and white snow, through which splintered rocks and beetling crags thrust their black heads. The view into the Kambachen gorge was magnificent, though it did not reveal the very bottom of the valley and its moraines: the black precipices of its opposite flank seemed to rise to the glaciers of Nango, fore-shortened into snow-capped precipices 5000 feet high, amongst which lay the Kambachen pass, bearing north-west by north. Lower down the valley, appeared a broad flat, called Jubla, a halting-place one stage below the village of Kambachen, on the road to Lelyp on the Tambur: it must be a remarkable geological as well as natural feature, for it appeared to jut abruptly and quite horizontally from the black cliffs of the valley.