Books: Himalayan Journals (Complete)

J >> J. D. Hooker >> Himalayan Journals (Complete)

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Illustration--ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE YANGMA VALLEY.

Yangma convents stood at the mouth of a gorge which opened upon the
uppermost terrace; and the surface of the latter, here well covered
with grass, was furrowed into concentric radiating ridges, which were
very conspicuous from a distance. The buildings consisted of a
wretched collection of stone huts, painted red, enclosed by loose
stone dykes. Two shockingly dirty Lamas received me and conducted me
to the temple, which had very thick walls, but was undistinguishable
from the other buildings. A small door opened upon an apartment piled
full of old battered gongs, drums, scraps of silk hangings, red
cloth, broken praying-machines--relics much resembling those in the
lumber-room of a theatre. A ladder led from this dismal hole to the
upper story, which was entered by a handsomely carved and gilded
door: within, all was dark, except from a little lattice-window
covered with oil-paper. On one side was the library, a carved case,
with a hundred gilded pigeon-holes, each holding a real or sham book,
and each closed by a little square door, on which hung a bag full of
amulets. In the centre of the book-case was a recess, containing a
genuine Jos or Fo, graced with his Chinese attribute of very long
pendulous moustaches and beard, and totally wanting that air of
contemplative repose which the Tibetan Lamas give to their idols.
Banners were suspended around, with paintings of Lhassa, Teshoo
Loombo, and various incarnations of Boodh. The books were of the
usual Tibetan form, oblong squares of separate block-printed leaves
of paper, made in Nepal or Bhotan from the bark of a _Daphne,_ bound
together by silk cords, and placed between ornamented wooden boards.
On our way up the valley, we had passed some mendongs and chaits, the
latter very pretty stone structures, consisting of a cube, pyramid,
hemisphere, and cone placed on the top of one another, forming
together the tasteful combination which appears on the cover of
these volumes.

Beyond the convents the valley again contracted, and on crossing a
third, but much lower, moraine, a lake opened to view, surrounded by
flat terraces, and a broad gravelly shore, part of the lake being
dry. To the west, the cliffs were high, black and steep: to the east
a large lateral valley, filled at about 1500 feet up with blue
glaciers, led (as did the other lateral valleys) to the gleaming
snows of Nango; the moraine, too, here abutted on the east flank of
the Yangma valley, below the mouth of the lateral one. Much snow
(from the October fall) lay on the ground, and the cold was pinching
in the shade; still I could not help attempting to sketch this
wonderfully grand scene, especially as lakes in the Himalaya are
extremely rare: the present one was about a mile long, very shallow,
but broad, and as smooth as glass: it reminded me of the tarn in
Glencoe. The reflected lofty peak of Nango appeared as if frozen deep
down in its glassy bed, every snowy crest and ridge being rendered
with perfect precision.

Illustration--LOOKING ACROSS YANGMA VALLEY.

Nango is about 18,000 feet high; it is the next lofty mountain of
the Kinchinjunga group to the west of Junnoo, and I doubt if any
equally high peak occurs again for some distance further west in
Nepal. Facing the Yangma valley, it presents a beautiful range of
precipices of black rock, capped with a thick crust of snow: below
the cliffs the snow again appears continuously and very steep, for
2000 to 3000 feet downwards, where it terminates in glaciers that
descend to 14,000 feet. The steepest snow-beds appear cut into
vertical ridges, whence the whole snowy face is--as it were--crimped
in perpendicular, closely-set, zigzag lines, doubtless caused by the
melting process, which furrows the surface of the snow into channels
by which the water is carried off: the effect is very beautiful, but
impossible to represent on paper, from the extreme delicacy of the
shadows, and at the same time the perfect definition and precision of
the outlines.

Towards the head of the lake, its bed was quite dry and gravelly, and
the river formed a broad delta over it: the terraces here were
perhaps 100 feet above its level, those at the lower end not nearly
so much. Beyond the lake, the river became again a violent torrent,
rushing in a deep chasm, till we arrived at the fork of the valley,
where we once more met with numerous dry lake-beds, with terraces
high up on the mountain sides.

In the afternoon we reached the village of Yangma, a miserable
collection of 200 to 300 stone huts, nestling under the steep
south-east flank of a lofty, flat-topped terrace, laden with gigantic
glacial boulders, and projecting southward from a snowy mountain
which divides the valley. We encamped on the flat under the village,
amongst some stone dykes, enclosing cultivated fields. One arm of the
valley runs hence N.N.E. amongst snowy mountains, and appeared quite
full of moraines; the other, or continuation of the Yangma, runs
W.N.W., and leads to the Kanglachem pass.

Near our camp (of which the elevation was 13,500 feet), radishes,
barley, wheat, potatos, and turnips, were cultivated as summer crops,
and we even saw some on the top of the terrace, 400 feet above our
camp, or nearly 14,000 feet above the sea; these were grown in small
fields cleared of stones, and protected by dykes.

The scenery, though dismal, (no juniper even attaining this
elevation,) was full of interest and grandeur, from the number and
variety of snowy peaks and glaciers all around the elevated horizon;
the ancient lake-beds, now green or brown with scanty vegetation, the
vast moraines, the ridges of glacial debris, the flat terraces,
marking, as it were with parallel roads, the bluff sides of the
mountains, the enormous boulders perched upon them, and strewed
everywhere around, the little Boodhist monuments of quaint,
picturesque shapes, decorated with poles and banners, the
many-coloured dresses of the people, the brilliant blue of the
cloudless heaven by day, the depth of its blackness by night,
heightened by the light of the stars, that blaze and twinkle with a
lustre unknown in less lofty regions: all these were subjects for
contemplation, rendered more impressive by the stillness of the
atmosphere, and the silence that reigned around. The village seemed
buried in repose throughout the day: the inhabitants had already
hybernated, their crops were stored, the curd made and dried, the
passes closed, the soil frozen, the winter's stock of fuel housed,
and the people had retired into the caverns of their half
subterranean houses, to sleep, spin wool, and think of Boodh, if of
anything at all, the dead, long winter through. The yaks alone can
find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and
eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and
evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few
minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the
harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed,
disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* [Snow covers the
ground at Yangma from December till April, and the falls are said to
be very heavy, at times amounting to 12 feet in depth.]

I had taken three days' food to Yangma, and stayed there as long as
it lasted: the rest of my provisions I had left below the first
moraine, where a lateral valley leads east over the Nango pass to the
Kambachen valley, which lay on the route back to Sikkim.

I was premature in complaining of my Wallanchoon tents, those
provided for me at Yangma being infinitely worse, mere rags, around
which I piled sods as a defence from the insidious piercing
night-wind that descended from the northern glaciers in calm, but
most keen, breezes. There was no food to be procured in the village,
except a little watery milk, and a few small watery potatos.
The latter have only very recently been introduced amongst the
Tibetans, from the English garden at the Nepalese capital, I believe,
and their culture has not spread in these regions further east than
Kinchinjunga, but they will very soon penetrate into Tibet from
Dorjiling, or eastward from Nepal. My private stock of provisions
--consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my kind friend
Mr. Hodgson--had fallen very low; and I here found to my dismay that
of four remaining two-pound cases, provided as meat, three contained
prunes, and one _"dindon aux truffes!"_ Never did luxuries come more
inopportunely; however the greasy French viand served for many a
future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my rice, and according to the
theory of chemists, to supply animal heat in these frigid regions.
As for my people, they were not accustomed to much animal food; two
pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their common diet under
cold and fatigue. The poorer Tibetans, especially, who undergo great
privation and toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and
a very little butter and salt: this is not only the case with those
amongst whom I mixed so much, but is also mentioned by MM. Huc and
Gabet, as having been observed by them in other parts of Tibet.

On the 1st of December I visited the village and terrace, and
proceeded to the head of the Yangma valley, in order to ascend the
Kanglachem pass as far as practicable. The houses are low, built of
stone, of no particular shape, and are clustered in groups against
the steep face of the terrace; filthy lanes wind amongst them, so
narrow, that if you are not too tall, you look into the slits of
windows on either hand, by turning your head, and feel the noisome
warm air in whiffs against your face. Glacial boulders lie scattered
throughout the village, around and beneath the clusters of houses,
from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the native rock.
I entered one house by a narrow low door through walls four feet
thick, and found myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood,
and dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story, which was
quite dark, and as I stood in it my head was in the upper, to which I
ascended by a notched pole (like that in the picture of a Kamschatk
house in Cook's voyage), and went into a small low room. The inmates
looked half asleep, they were intolerably indolent and filthy, and
were employed in spinning wool and smoking. A hole in the wall of the
upper apartment led me on to the stone roof of the neighbouring
house, from which I passed to the top of a glacial boulder,
descending thence by rude steps to the narrow alley. Wishing to see
as much as I could, I was led on a winding course through, in and
out, and over the tops of the houses of the village, which
alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or gravel pit, and gipsies
living in old lime-kilns; and of all sorts of odd places that are
turned to account as human habitations.

From the village I ascended to the top of the terrace, which is a
perfectly level, sandy, triangular plain, pointing down the valley at
the fork of the latter, and abutting against the flank of a steep,
rocky, snow-topped mountain to the northward. Its length is probably
half a mile from north to south, but it runs for two miles westward up
the valley, gradually contracting. The surface, though level, is very
uneven, being worn into hollows, and presenting ridges and hillocks of
blown sand and gravel, with small black tufts of rhododendron.
Enormous boulders of gneiss and granite were scattered over the
surface; one of the ordinary size, which I measured, was seventy feet
in girth, and fifteen feet above the ground, into which it had partly
sunk. From the southern pointed end I took sketches of the opposite
flanks of the valleys east and west. The river was about 400 feet
below me, and flowed in a little flat lake-bed; other terraces skirted
it, cut out, as it were, from the side of that I was on. On the
opposite flank of the valley were several superimposed terraces, of
which the highest appeared to tally with the level I occupied, and the
lowest was raised very little above the river; none were continuous
for any distance, but the upper one in particular, could be most
conspicuously traced up and down the main valley, whilst, on looking
across to the eastern valley, a much higher, but less distinctly
marked one appeared on it. The road to the pass lay west-north-west up
the north bank of the Yangma river, on the great terrace; for two
miles it was nearly level along the gradually narrowing shelf, at
times dipping into the steep gulleys formed by lateral torrents from
the mountains; and as the terrace disappeared, or melted, as it were,
into the rising floor of the valley, the path descended upon the lower
and smaller shelf.

Illustration--DIAGRAM OF THE GLACIAL TERRACES AT THE FORK OF THE
YANGA VALLEY.

We came suddenly upon a flock of gigantic wild sheep, feeding on
scanty tufts of dried sedge and grass; there were twenty-five of
these enormous animals, of whose dimensions the term sheep gives no
idea: they are very long-legged, stand as high as a calf, and have
immense horns, so large that the fox is said to take up his abode in
their hollows, when detached and bleaching, on the barren mountains
of Tibet. Though very wild, I am sure I could easily have killed a
couple had I had my gun, but I had found it necessary to reduce my
party so uncompromisingly, that I could not afford a man both for my
gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to Dorjiling, with
Mr. Hodgson's bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs. Travelling
without fire-arms sounds strange in India, but in these regions
animal life is very rare, game is only procured with much hunting and
trouble, and to come within shot of a flock of wild sheep was a
contingency I never contemplated. Considering how very short we were
of any food, and quite out of animal diet, I could not but bitterly
regret the want of a gun, but consoled myself by reflecting that the
instruments were still more urgently required to enable me to survey
this extremely interesting valley. As it was, the great beasts
trotted off, and turned to tantalise me by grazing within an easy
stalking distance. We saw several other flocks, of thirty to forty,
during the day, but never, either on this or any future occasion,
within shot. The _Ovis Ammon_ of Pallas stands from four to five feet
high, and measures seven feet from nose to tail; it is quite a
Tibetan animal, and is seldom seen below 14,000 feet, except when
driven lower by snow; and I have seen it as high as 18,000 feet.
The same animal, I believe, is found in Siberia, and is allied to the
Big-horn of North America.

Soon after descending to the bed of the valley, which is broad and
open, we came on a second dry lake-bed, a mile long, with shelving
banks all round, heavily snowed on the shaded side; the river was
divided into many arms, and meandered over it, and a fine
glacier-bound valley opened into it from the south. There were no
boulders on its surface, which was pebbly, with tufts of grass and
creeping tamarisk. On the banks I observed much granite, with large
mica crystals, hornstone, tourmaline, and stratified quartz, with
granite veins parallel to the foliation or lamination.

A rather steep ascent of a mile, through a contracted part of the
valley, led to another and smaller lake-bed, a quarter of a mile long
and 100 yards broad, covered with patches of snow, and having no
lateral valley opening into it: it faced the now stupendous masses of
snow and ice which filled the upper part of the Yangma valley.
This lake-bed (elevation, 15,186 feet) was strewed with enormous
boulders; a rude stone hut stood near it, where we halted for a few
minutes at 1 p.m., when the temperature was 42.2 degrees, while the
dew-point was only 20.7 degrees.* [This indicates a very dry state of
the air, the saturation-point being 0.133 degrees; whereas, at the
same hour at Calcutta it was 0.559 degrees.] At the same time, the
black bulb thermometer, fully exposed on the snow, rose 54 degrees
above the air, and the photometer gave 10.572. Though the sun's power
was so great, there was, however, no appearance of the snow melting,
evaporation proceeding with too great rapidity.

Illustration--KANGLACHEM PASS.

Enormous piles of gravel and sand had descended upon the upper end of
this lake-bed, forming shelves, terraces, and curving ridges,
apparently consolidated by ice, and covered in many places with snow.
Following the stream, we soon came to an immense moraine, which
blocked up the valley, formed of angular boulders, some of which were
fifty feet high. Respiration had been difficult for some time, and
the guide we had taken from the village said we were some hours from
the top of the pass, and could get but a little way further; we
however proceeded, plunging through the snow, till on cresting the
moraine a stupendous scene presented itself. A gulf of moraines, and
enormous ridges of debris, lay at our feet, girdled by an
amphitheatre of towering, snow-clad peaks, rising to 17,000 and
18,000 feet all around. Black scarped precipices rose on every side;
deep snow-beds and blue glaciers rolled down every gulley, converging
in the hollow below, and from each transporting its own materials,
there ensued a complication of moraines, that presented no order to
the eye. In spite of their mutual interference, however, each had
raised a ridge of debris or moraine parallel to itself.

We descended with great difficulty through the soft snow that covered
the moraine, to the bed of this gulf of snow and glaciers; and halted
by an enormous stone, above the bed of a little lake, which was
snowed all over, but surrounded by two superimposed level terraces,
with sharply defined edges. The moraine formed a barrier to its now
frozen waters, and it appeared to receive the drainage of many
glaciers, which filtered through their gravelly ridges and moraines.

We could make no further progress; the pass lay at the distance of
several hours' march, up a valley to the north, down which the
glacier must have rolled that had deposited this great moraine; the
pass had been closed since October, it being very lofty, and the head
of this valley was far more snowy than that at Wallanchoon. We halted
in the snow from 3 to 4 p.m., during which time I again took angles
and observations; the height of this spot, called Pabuk, is 16,038
feet, whence the pass is probably considerably over 17,000 feet, for
there was a steep ascent beyond our position. The sun sank at 3 p.m.,
and the thermometer immediately fell from 35 degrees to 30.75
degrees.* [At 4 o'clock, to 29.5 degrees, the average dew-point was
16.3 degrees, and dryness 0.55; weight of vapour in a cubic foot,
1.33 grains.]

After fixing in my note and sketch books the principal features of
this sublime scene, we returned down the valley: the distance to our
camp being fully eight miles, night overtook us before we got
half-way, but a two days' old moon guided us perfectly, a remarkable
instance of the clearness of the atmosphere at these great
elevations. Lassitude, giddiness, and headache came on as our
exertions increased, and took away the pleasure I should otherwise
have felt in contemplating by moonlight the varied phenomena, which
seemed to crowd upon the restless imagination, in the different forms
of mountain, glacier, moraine, lake, boulder and terrace. Happily I
had noted everything on my way up, and left nothing intentionally to
be done on returning. In making such excursions as this, it is above
all things desirable to seize and book every object worth noticing on
the way out: I always carried my note-book and pencil tied to my
jacket pocket, and generally walked with them in my hand. It is
impossible to begin observing too soon, or to observe too much: if
the excursion is long, little is ever done on the way home; the
bodily powers being mechanically exerted, the mind seeks repose, and
being fevered through over-exertion, it can endure no train of
thought, or be brought to bear on a subject.

During my stay at Yangma, the thermometer never rose to 50 degrees,
it fell to 14.75 degrees at night; the ground was frozen for several
inches below the surface, but at two feet depth its temperature was
37.5 degrees. The black bulb thermometer rose on one occasion 84
degrees above the surrounding air. Before leaving, I measured by
angles and a base-line the elevations of the great village-terrace
above the river, and that of a loftier one, on the west flank of the
main valley; the former was about 400 and the latter 700 feet.

Considering this latter as the upper terrace, and concluding that it
marks a water level, it is not very difficult to account for its
origin. There is every reason to suppose that the flanks of the
valley were once covered to the elevation of the upper terrace, with
an enormous accumulation of debris; though it does not follow that
the whole valley was filled by ice-action to the same depth; the
effect of glaciers being to deposit moraines between themselves and
the sides of the valley they fill; as also to push forward similar
accumulations. Glaciers from each valley, meeting at the fork, where
their depth would be 700 feet of ice, would both deposit the
necessary accumulation along the flanks of the great valley, and also
throw a barrier across it. The melting waters of such glaciers would
accumulate in lakes, confined by the frozen earth, between the
moraines and mountains. Such lakes, though on a small scale, are
found at the terminations and sides of existing glaciers, and are
surrounded by terraces of shingle and debris; these terraces being
laid bare by the sudden drainage of the lakes during seasons of
unusual warmth. To explain the phenomena of the Yangma valley, it may
be necessary to demand larger lakes and deeper accumulations of
debris than are now familiar to us, but the proofs of glaciers having
once descended to from 8000 to 10,000 feet in every Sikkim and east
Nepal valley communicating with mountains above 16,000 feet
elevation, are overwhelming, and the glaciers must, in some cases,
have been fully forty miles long, and 500 feet in depth. The absence
of any remains of a moraine, or of blocks of rock in the valley below
the fork, is I believe, the only apparent objection to this theory;
but, as I shall elsewhere have occasion to observe, the magnitude of
the moraines bears no fixed proportion to that of the glacier, and at
Pabuk, the steep ridges of debris, which were heaped up 200 feet
high, were far more striking than the more usual form of moraine.

On my way up to Yangma I had rudely plotted the valley, and selected
prominent positions for improving my plan on my return: these I now
made use of, taking bearings with the azimuth compass, and angles by
means of a pocket sextant. The result of my running-survey of the
whole valley, from 10,000 to 16,000 feet, I have given along with a
sketch-map of my routes in India, which accompanies this volume.

Illustration--SKULLS OF OVIS AMMON.

CHAPTER XI

Ascend to Nango mountain -- Moraines -- Glaciers -- Vegetation --
_Rhododendron Hodgsoni_ -- Rocks -- Honey-combed surface of snow --
Perpetual snow -- Top of pass -- View -- Elevation -- Geology --
Distance of sound -- Plants -- Temperature -- Scenery -- Cliffs of
granite and hurled boulders -- Camp -- Descent -- Pheasants -- Larch
-- Himalayan pines -- Distribution of Deodar, note on --
Tassichooding temples -- Kambachen village -- Cultivation -- Moraines
in valley, distribution of -- Picturesque lake-beds, and their
vegetation -- Tibetan sheep and goats -- _Cryptogramma crispa_ --
Ascent to Choonjerma pass -- View of Junnoo -- Rocks of its summit --
Misty ocean -- Nepal peaks -- Top of pass -- Temperature, and
observations -- Gorgeous sunset -- Descent to Yalloong valley --
Loose path -- Night scenes -- Musk deer.

We passed the night a few miles below the great moraine, in a
pine-wood (alt. 11,000 feet) opposite the gorge which leads to the
Kambachen or Nango pass, over the south shoulder of the mountain of
that name: it is situated on a ridge dividing the Yangma river from
that of Kambachen, which latter falls into the Tambur opposite Lelyp.

The road crosses the Yangma (which is about fifteen feet wide), and
immediately ascends steeply to the south-east, over a rocky moraine,
clothed with a dense thicket of rhododendrons, mountain-ash, maples,
pine, birch, juniper, etc. The ground was covered with silvery flakes
of birch bark, and that of _Rhododendron Hodgsoni,_ which is as
delicate as tissue-paper, and of a pale flesh-colour. I had never
before met with this species, and was astonished at the beauty of its
foliage, which was of a beautiful bright green, with leaves sixteen
inches long.

Beyond the region of trees and large shrubs the alpine rhododendrons
filled the broken surface of the valley, growing with _Potentilla,_
Honeysuckle, _Polygonum,_ and dwarf juniper. The peak of Nango seemed
to tower over the gorge, rising behind some black, splintered, rocky
cliffs, sprinkled with snow, narrow defiles opened up through these
cliffs to blue glaciers, and their mouths were invariably closed by
beds of shingly moraines, curving outwards from either, flank in
concentric ridges.