Illustration—ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE RAMBACHEN VALLEY.
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, fao it appeared to jut abruptly and quite horizontally from the black cliffs of the valley.
Looking north, the conical head of Junnoo was just scattering the mists from its snowy shoulders, and standing forth to view, the most magnificent spectacle I ever beheld. It was quite close to me, bearing north-east by east, and subtending an angle of 12 degrees 23, and is much the steepest and most conical of all the peaks of these regions. From whichever side it is viewed, it rises 9000 feet above the general mountain mass of 16,000 feet elevation, towering like a blunt cone, with a short saddle on one side, that dips in a steep cliff: it appeared as if uniformly snowed, from its rocks above 20,000 feet (like those of Kinchinjunga) being of white granite, and not contrasting with the snow. Whether the top is stratified or not, I cannot tell, but waving parallel lines are very conspicuous near it, as shown in the accompanying view.* [The appearance of Mont Cervin, from the Riffelberg, much reminded me of that of Junnoo, from the Choonjerma pass, the former bearing the same relation to Monte Rosa that the latter does to Kinchinjunga. Junnoo, though incomparably the more stupendous mass, not only rising 10,000 feat higher above the sea, but towering 4000 feet higher above the ridge on which it is supported, is not nearly so remarkable in outline, so sharp, or so peaked as is Mount Cervin: it is a very much grander, but far less picturesque object. The whiteness of the sides of Junnoo adds also greatly to its apparent altitude; while the strong relief in which the black cliffs of Mont Cervin protrude through its snowy mantle greatly diminish both its apparent height and distance.]
Illustration—JUNNOO 24,000 FT. FROM CHOONJERMA PASS 16,000 FT. EAST
NEPAL.
Looking south as evening drew on, another wonderful spectacle presented itself, similar to that which I described at Sakkiazung, but displayed here on an inconceivably grander scale, with all the effects exaggerated. I saw a sea of mist floating 3000 feet beneath me, just below the upper level of the black pines; the magnificent spurs of the snowy range which I had crossed rising out of it in rugged grandeur as promontories and peninsulas, between which the misty ocean seemed to finger up like the fiords of Norway, or the salt-water lochs of the west of Scotland; whilst islets tailed off from the promontories, rising here and there out of the deceptive elements. I was so high above this mist, that it had not the billowy appearance I saw before, but was a calm unruffled ocean, boundless to the south and west, where the horizon over-arched it. A little to the north of west I discerned the most lofty group of mountains in Nepal* [Called Tsungau by the Bhoteeas. Junnoo is called Kumbo Kurma by the Hill-men of Nepal.] (mentioned at Chapter VIII), beyond Kinchinjurga, which I believe are on the west flank of the great valley through which the Arun river enters Nepal from Tibet: they were very distant, and subtended so small an angle, that I could not measure them with the sextant and artificial horizon their height, judging from the quantity of snow, must be prodigious.