56 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



surprising exhibition of what seems to be miraculous to 

 see a flock of thar with perfect ease crossing the face of 

 precipices where apparently no foothold exists, in complete 

 defiance of the laws of gravity, where a pair of wings 

 should in all common reason be indispensable to avert a 

 calamity. 



Punoo now decided to explore the grass slopes visible 

 above the ravine, and soon discovered a practicable 

 ladder-like ascent. Steady climbing for three more hours 

 brought us into easier ground, with a well-defined chim- 

 ney-like ascent and great boulders, which were jammed 

 where they fell from the crags above. The view was now 

 magnificent of the great peaks of Nanda Devi, facing us at 

 a distance which seemed like half a mile, every stone 

 being clearly defined in the rarefied atmosphere. In 

 reality, by the map and prismatic bearings, the summit 

 was twelve miles away. The whole amphitheatre of 

 mountains, all over 20,000 feet above the sea and 14,000 

 above the bottom of the valley, reminded one of the 

 Bernese Oberland from Miirren, but in more gigantic 

 proportions, with snow and glacier extending for miles 

 around the great bare peaks, many of them unnamed 

 and all of them nearly inaccessible and unexplored by 

 man. 



The actual prospect of snow peaks surrounding the 

 Rindi valley, which probably exceeds the depth of the cele- 

 brated Colorado canon, comprises the peaks marked in the 

 Trigonometrical Survey as No. X., to the S.W., 15,805 feet 

 in elevation ; No. XI., 20,758, named by the hill-men 

 Nanda Gangoti ; No. XII., 22,385 ; No. XIII., 22,388, 

 named Moo Gobin ; No. XIV., Nanda Devi, 25,794. These 

 form an amphitheatre to the south and east. The circle 

 is completed to the north by the massive summit of 

 Dunagiri, No. III., 23,317. Visible in places are also 



