Himalayan Journals — Volume 1: 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 — 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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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