IMMENSE GLACIERS. 371 



attempts to approach them were fruitless, as they were in a 

 very open position, and proved too crafty for us. Nothing 

 more was seen except a brood of snow-pheasants which we 

 flushed on our way down to the tents. 



A few days' travelling brought us to the ibex ground, where 

 the Major had an unsuccessful hunt, whilst I took a good rest 

 in camp. 



Any attempt of mine to describe the glacier scenery of the 

 Spiti and Lahoul mountains, through which our way led for 

 several days, would be quite inadequate to convey the slight- 

 est idea of its wild grandeur. Suffice it to say that the longest 

 of Alpine glaciers, the Aletsch, which is some twenty miles in 

 length, cannot be compared in size with many of those in the 

 Himalayas, the largest of which are found in the Karakorum 

 range, far to the north-west of Cashmere and Ladak. Colonel 

 Godwin-Austen, the greatest authority on Himalayan glaciers, 

 gives the length of the Biafo glacier as 64 miles of continuous 

 ice ; the Baltoro as 35 miles, up to K 2 (now named Mount 

 Godwin - Austen), the second - highest known peak in the 

 world : but this glacier took him some 55 miles of walking, 

 and then he had not reached the watershed. One morning 

 we traversed the lower part of the Shigri glacier in Spiti, but 

 it was there so covered over with dirt and stones, that, until 

 we had repeatedly probed it with our iron-shod sticks, it was 

 difficult to believe we were walking for miles over solid ice. 



The ponies bred in Spiti are much more celebrated for their 

 comeliness 'than are its human inhabitants, more especially 

 the womankind. And justly so, if I may judge from the 

 personal appearance of a batch of sturdy-limbed females who 

 one day, after depositing the heavy loads they had carried 

 on their backs for ten miles or more, treated us to a terpsi- 

 chorean performance, accompanied by their unmelodious 

 voices. They are, however, as cheery and almost as unsophis- 

 ticated a set of people as the Tibetans. Here, where the 

 inhabitants are Buddhists, even the clerical members of 



