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
Enormous fractured boulders of gneiss were frequent over the whole of
Mon Lepcha, from 7000 to 11,000 feet: they were of the same material
as the rock _in situ,_ and as unaccountable in their origin as the
loose blocks on Dorjiling and Sinchul spurs at similar elevations,
often cresting narrow ridges. I measured one angular detached block,
forty feet high, resting on a steep narrow shoulder of the spur, in a
position to which it was impossible it could have rolled; and it is
equally difficult to suppose that glacial ice deposited it 4000 feet
above the bottom of the gorge, except we conclude the valley to have
been filled with ice to that depth. A glance at the map will show
that Mon Lepcha is remarkably situated, opposite the face of
Kinchinjunga, and at the great bend of the Ratong. Had that valley
ever been filled with water during a glacial period, Mon Lepcha would
have formed a promontory, and many floating bergs from Kinchin would
have been stranded on its flank: but I nowhere observed these rocks
to be of so fine a granite as I believe the upper rocks of Kinchin to
be, and I consequently cannot advance even that far-fetched solution
with much plausibility.
As I ascended, the rocks became more granitic, with large crystals of
mica. The summit was another broad bare flat, elevated 13,080 feet,
and fringed by a copse of rose, berberry, and very alpine
rhododendrons: the Himalayan heather (_Adromeda fastigiata_) grew
abundantly here, affording us good fuel.
The toilsome ascent through the soft snow and brushwood delayed the
coolies, who scarcely accomplished five miles in the day. Some of
them having come up by dark, I prepared to camp on the mountain-top,
strewing thick masses of _Andromeda_ and moss (which latter hung in
great tufts from the bushes) on the snow; my blankets bad not
arrived, but there was no prospect of a snow-storm.
The sun was powerful when I reached the summit, and I was so warm
that I walked about barefoot on the frozen snow without
inconvenience, preferring it to continuing in wet stockings: the
temperature at the time was 29.5 degrees, with a brisk south-east
moist wind, and the dew point 22.8 degrees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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