GLACIEKS OF THE HYMALAYA. 235 



Although it is only of late years that glaciers have been 

 generally acknowledged to exist in the Himalaya, the descrip- 

 tions given many years ago by Captain Hodgson of the source 

 of the Ganges could leave no doubt as to the fact on the mind 

 of any one familiar with the glaciers of the Alps. " The 

 Bhagiruttee or Ganges," he wrote in 1817, " issues from under 



a very low arch at the foot of the grand snow-bed 



Over the debouche the mass of snow is perfectly perpendicular, 

 and from the bed of the stream to the summit, we estimate the 

 thickness at little less than 300 feet of solid frozen snow, pro- 

 bably the accumulation of ages. It is in layers of some feet 

 thick, each seemingly the remains of a fall of a separate year."* 

 The level of the source of the Ganges is 12,900 feet, and the 

 chief error of this description is in the interchange of the word 

 snow for ice, and in the absence of a clear perception that the 

 ice could not have always lain there, some thousand feet below 

 the snow-line, but must have travelled progressively down the val- 

 ley, producing the phenomena of rents and superficial rubbish- 

 heaps which Captain Hodgson describes in another paragraph. 



For many years after 1817 the glaciers of the Himalaya, if 

 mentioned at all, were so under the false name of snow-beds, 

 and their relations to physical geography were wholly neglected. 

 This arose from the imperfect education of those clever men 

 who have at different times explored our Indian possessions, 

 who being chiefly bred in that remote land, had little acquaint- 

 ance with the scientific literature of Europe, and still less with 

 its physical features. Scarcely any of our Himalayan travellers 

 had previously visited the Alps. 



It is since 1840 that we have acquired more correct infor- 

 mation as to the glaciers of India. Mr. Vigne, in his interesting 

 Travels in Kashmir, has described the perfectly characteristic 

 features of the glaciers of some of the sources of the river 

 Indus occurring in the territory of Little Thibet, about lat. 

 35. Colonel Madden and Captain Richard Strachey directed 



* Asiatic Researches, vol. xiv., quoted in Captain B. Strachey's paper cited 

 below. 



