[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.