98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are little lower than Mont Blanc ; their roads are dizzy shelves encircling 

 more tremendous cliffs, or swinging jimlas spanning frightful gorges, 

 whose depths seem lost in the bowels of the earth. " There, far above 

 the habitation of man, no living thing exists, no sound is heard , the 

 very echo of the traveler's footsteps startles him in the awful solitude 

 and silence that reigns in these august dwellings of everlasting snow." 

 Deep ravines penetrate between imposing groups of inaccessible mount 

 tains, torrents hew out their tortuous courses over precipitous slopes, 

 and the gathered influx of innumerable lines of drainage gives rise to 

 the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmapootra, great and sacred streams whose 

 head-waters here pursue their rocky and dangerous descent to the 

 plains of India. Between the higher ranges nestle the fertile valleys 

 of Nepaul, Bootan, and Assam, themselves high table-lands upon the 

 declivity of the snowy peaks ; and to the east, beneath the alternate 

 shadows of the Hindoo-Koosh and the Himalayas, reposes the fragrant 

 vale of Cashmere. 



As we approach the mountains we traverse three distinct regions : 

 the green "Tarai," marshy and insalubrious; the middle country, a belt 

 of wooded land, arid and with a porous soil ; and lastly, at 10,000 feet, 

 the dry and unhealthy marais. The nucleal range we find is beset 

 with numerous branches, whose long axes stretch out in waving and 

 complicated lines from the central ridge, lie furcating and multiplying 

 like tree-limbs as they embank the rivers, or surround occasional basins, 

 into whose fruitful beauty the traveler peers. Clay slate, very micace- 

 ous, and passing into sandstone with interstratified limestone, forms the 

 lithological basis of the mountains, and through the passes ramifying 

 veins of quartz and granite. The tertiary formation extends up the 

 valleys and laps over the foot-hills. The ascent now becomes strewed 

 with erratic blocks, and angular bowlders of granite occur far removed 

 from their origin, while ravines and stream-beds are picturesquely strewed 

 with transported masses. At times the accumulation of bowlders be- 

 comes so extensive as to choke the valleys, or rise in confused piles 

 and in unstable equilibrium for a hundred feet above the brawling 

 streams which pass between them. The valley of the Shayuk is filled 

 with these bowlders ; and, after its waters unite with the Indus, their 

 swollen floods pour through a narrow channel beneath enormous heaps 

 of angular fragments. Again, about Iskardo, two banks of bowlders 

 project upon the valley forty to fifty feet high; in fact, along the Indus 

 immense tracts are covered with granitic masses ; they lie over the allu- 

 vial land, intermixed indeed with it, and form natural features from 

 their size. The valley of the Thawar is fairly blocked at one end by 

 the collection of bowlders, and long hills are composed of such debris. 

 For almost a day's journey on the mountain-sides, west of Pok, lime- 

 stone blocks occur in great numbers, transported from indeterminate 

 distances, as no limestone occurs here in situ. A glacier occurs upon 

 the Parang Pass, not of large proportions, which, wedged between the 



