Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: Or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, the Khasia Mountains, etc.Hooker, Joseph Dalton
History
Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: 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
From the top of the second moraine, a very curious scene opened up
the valley, of another but more stony and desolate level lake-bed,
through which the Yangma (here very rapid) rushed, cutting a channel
about sixty feet deep; the flanks of this second lake-bed were cut
most distinctly into two principal terraces, which were again
subdivided into others, so that the general appearance was that of
many raised beaches, but each so broken up, that, with the exception
of one on the banks of the river, none were continuous for any
distance. We descended 200 feet, and crossed the valley and river
obliquely in a north-west direction, to a small temple and convent
which stood on a broad flat terrace under the black, precipitous,
west flank: this gave me a good opportunity of examining the
structure of this part of the valley, which was filled with an
accumulation, probably 200 feet thick at the deepest part, of angular
gravel and enormous boulders, both imbedded in the gravel, and
strewed on the flat surfaces of the terraces. The latter were always
broadest opposite to the lateral valleys, perfectly horizontal for
the short distance that they were continuous; and very barren; there
were no traces of fossils, nor could I assure myself of
stratification. The accumulation was wholly glacial; and probably a
lake had supervened on the melting of the great glacier and its
recedence, which lake, confined by a frozen moraine, would
periodically lose its waters by sudden accessions of heat melting the
ice of the latter. Stratified silt, no doubt, once covered the lake
bottom, and the terraces have, in succession, been denuded of it by
rain and snow. These causes are now in operation amongst the
stupendous glaciers of north-east Sikkim, where valleys, dammed up by
moraines, exhibit lakes hemmed in between these, the base of the
glacier, and the flanks of the valleys.
Illustration--ANCIENT MORAINES IN THE YANGMA VALLEY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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