ON MOUNTAINS AND MANKIND. 347 



hliiiij,- soiuowhat (he Nieves Penitentes of tho Andes, tlu)U<2:li toi-iucd 

 in a dirt'erent material. 



(Jreat sun hoat a('tin<!: on surfaces uneqiuilly protected, combined in 

 the latter case with the strain of sudden descent, is, no doubt, the 

 cause of both phenomena. Generally the peculiarities of the great 

 glaciers of Kangchenjunga may be attributed to a vertical sun, which 

 renders the frozen material less liable to crack, less rigid, and more 

 plastic. 



A glacier, as a rule, involves a moraine. Now, moraines are largely 

 formed fi-om the material contributed by sul)aerial denudation, in 

 plain words, by the action of heat and cold and moisture on the cliffs 

 that border them. It is what falls on glacier, not that which it falls 

 over, that mainly makes a moraine. The proof is that the moraines 

 of a glacier which flows under no impending clifl's are puny com- 

 l>ared with those of one that lies beneath great rock walls. 



Take, for example, the Norwegian glaciers of the Jostedals Brae 

 and compare them with the Swiss. The former, falling from a great 

 neve plain or snowfield, from which hardly a crag protrudes, are 

 models of cleanliness. I may cite, as examples, the three fascinating 

 glaciers of the Olden Valley. The Rosenlaui glacier in Switzerland 

 owed the cleanliness which gave it a reputation fifty years ago, before 

 its retirement from tourists' tracks, to a similar cause — a vast snow 

 plateau, the AVetterkessel. 



One peculiarity very noticeable both in the Himalaya and the 

 Caucasus I have never found satisfactorily accounted for. I refer 

 to the long, grassy trenches lying between the lateral moraine and the 

 hillside, which often seem to the mountain explorer to have been 

 made by Providence to form grass paths for his benefit. They may 

 possibly be due to the action of torrents falling from the hillside, 

 which, meeting the moraine and constantly sweeping along its base, 

 undermine it and keep a passage open for themselves. There are 

 remarkable specimens of this formation on both sides of the Bezingi 

 glacier, in the Caucasus, and on the north side of the Zemu glacier, in 

 Sikhim. 



Water is one of the greatest features in mountain scenery. In 

 Norway it is omnipresent. In this respect Scandinavia is a region 

 apart; the streams of the more southern ranges are scanty compared 

 with those of a region where the snowfall of two-thirds of the year is 

 discharged in a few weeks. Greece stands at the opposite pole. By 

 what seems a strange perversity of nature, its slender streams are apt 

 to disappear underground, to reissue miles away in the great foun- 

 tains that gave rise to so many legends. Arcadia is, for the most 

 part, a dry upland, sadly wanting in the two elements of pastoral 

 scenery, shady groves, and running brooks. 



