Himalayan Journals — Complete: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
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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
This superficial sculpturing must have been a very recent operation;
and the transport of the heavy stones opposite the entrance of the
streams has been effected by ice, and perhaps by snow; just as the
arctic ice strews the shores of the Polar ocean with rocks.
The weather had been threatening all day, northern and westerly
currents contending aloft with the south-east trade-wind of Sikkim, and
meeting in strife over the great upper valley of the Ratong. Stately
masses of white cumuli wheeled round that gulf of glaciers, partially
dissipating in an occasional snow-storm, but on the whole gradually
accumulating.
On my arrival the thermometer was 32°, with a powerful sun shining, and
it fell to 28° at 4 p.m., when the north wind set in. At sunset the
moon rose through angry masses of woolly cirrus; its broad full orb
threw a flood of yellow light over the serried tops south of Pundim;
thence advancing obliquely towards Nursing, “it stood tip-toe” for a
few minutes on that beautiful pyramid of snow, whence it seemed to take
flight and mount majestically into mid-air, illuminating Kinchin,
Pundim, and Kubra.
I sat at the entrance of my gipsy-like hut, anxiously watching the
weather, and absorbed in admiration of the moonrise, from which my
thoughts were soon diverted by its fading light as it entered a dense
mass of mare’s-tail cirrus. It was very cold, and the stillness was
oppressive. I had been urged not to attempt such an ascent in January,
my provisions were scanty, firewood only to be obtained from some
distance, the open undulating surface of Jongri was particularly
exposed to heavy snow-drifts, and the path was, at the best, a scarcely
perceptible track. I followed every change of the wind, every
fluctuation of the barometer and thermometer, each accession of
humidity, and the courses of the clouds aloft. At 7 p.m., the wind
suddenly shifted to the west, and the thermometer instantly rose from
20° to 30°. After 8 p.m., the temperature fell again, and the wind drew
round from west by south to north-east, when the fog cleared off. The
barometer rose no more than it usually does towards 10 p.m., and though
it clouded again, with the temperature at 17°, the wind seemed steady,
and I went to bed with a relieved mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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