6 THE S1KKIM HIMALAYA 



to it. They build great cities on its banks, and 

 come from great distances to see it. They perform 

 pilgrimages every year in thousands to the spot 

 where it issues from the Himalaya. And they 

 penetrate even to its source far back and high up 

 in the mountains. 



To the most enlightened, also, the Ganges 

 should be an object of reverence for its antiquity, 

 for its future, and for its power. From the surface 

 of the Bay of Bengal the sun's rays have drawn par- 

 ticles of water into the atmosphere. Currents in 

 the air have carried them for hundreds of miles over 

 the sea and over the plains of Bengal, till the chill of 

 the Himalaya Mountains has caused them to con- 

 dense and fall in snow and rain. But some have 

 been carried farther. They have been transported 

 right over the Himalaya at a height of at least 

 20,000 feet, till they have finally fallen in Tibet. 

 It is a striking fact that some of the water in the 

 Ganges is from rivers in Tibet which have cut their 

 way clean through the mighty range of the Hima- 

 laya. The Arun River, for example, rises in Tibet 

 and cuts through the Himalaya by a deep gorge in 

 the region between Mount Everest and Kinchin- 

 junga. These rivers are, indeed, much older than 

 the mountains. They were running their course 

 before the Himalaya were upheaved, and they kept 

 wearing out a channel for themselves as the moun- 

 tains rose and slowly over-towered them. 



Reverence, therefore, is due to the Ganges on 

 account of its vast antiquity. Reverence also is 

 due because it will flow on like now for hundreds of 

 thousands and perhaps for millions of years to come. 



