Himalayan Journals — Complete: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Complete: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.
Hooker, Joseph Dalton
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains
Up the valley of the Tawa the view was very grand of a magnificent
rocky mountain called Sidingbah, bearing south-east by south, on a spur
of the Singalelah range that runs westerly, and forms the south flank
of the Tawa, and the north of the Khabili valleys. This mountain is
fully 12,000 feet high, crested with rock and ragged black forest,
which, on the north flank, extends to its base: to the eastward, the
bare ridges of Singalelah were patched with snow, below which they too
were clothed with black pines.
From the opposite side of the Tawa to Khabang (alt. 6,020 feet), I was,
during our march southwards, most fortunate in obtaining a splendid
view of Kinchinjunga (bearing north-east by north), with its
associates, rising over the dark mass of Singalelah, its flanks showing
like tier above tier of green glaciers: its distance was fully
twenty-five miles, and as only about 7000 feet or 8000 feet from its
summit were visible, and Kubra was foreshortened against it, its
appearance was not grand; added to which, its top was round and
hummocky, not broken into peaks, as when seen from the south and east.
Villages and cultivation became more frequent as we proceeded
southward, and our daily marches were up ridges, and down into deep
valleys, with feeders from the flanks of Sidingbah to the Tambur. We
passed through the village of Tchonboong, and camped at Yangyading
(4,100 feet), sighted Yamroop, a large village and military post to the
west of our route, crossed the Pangwa river, and reached the valley of
the Khabili. During this part of the journey, I did not once see the
Tambur river, though I was day after day marching only seven to ten
miles distant from it, so uneven is the country. The mountains around
Taptiatok, Mywa Guola, and Chingtam, were pointed out to me, but they
presented no recognizable feature.
I often looked for some slope, or strike of the slopes of the spurs, in
any one valley, or that should prevail through several, but could
seldom trace any, except on one or two occasions, at low elevations.
Looking here across the valleys, there was a tendency in the gentle
slopes of the spurs to have plane faces dipping north-east, and to be
bounded by a line of cliffs striking north-west, and facing the
south-east. In such arrangements, the upheaved cliffs may be supposed
to represent parallel lines of faults, dislocation, or rupture, but I
could never trace any secondary valleys at right angles to these. There
is no such uniformity of strike as to give to the rivers a zig-zag
course of any regularity, or one having any apparent dependence on a
prevailing arrangement of the rocks; for, though the strike of the
chlorite and clay-slate at elevations below 6000 feet along its course,
is certainly north-west, with a dip to north-east, the flexures of the
river, as projected on the map, deviate very widely from these
directions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account