I64 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



of clear water over ten acres in area, with islands in 

 them. There were rivers flowing into the lakes. The 

 surface was a plain, and widened out at the head to several 

 miles. When clouds concealed the heights it was like 

 travelling on an icy sea. As far as the eye could reach on 

 all sides, the flat surface of the ice. This mass is always 

 travelling forward. There are no cracks or crevasses 

 to be encountered for miles as we advance further across 

 this veritable mer de glace ; but it begins to rise as one 

 gets nearer to the source, and the surface to become 

 rougher. The usual curious features of moraine lines, 

 and of rocks supported like tables on pillars of unmelted 

 ice, were very marked ; and there could be no better 

 place for experimenting on the movements of ice and 

 observing its extraordinary behaviour.* That the centre 

 of the glacier and the top, as in a river, flow faster than 

 the sides and bottom, has frequently been observed. In 

 one solid block it will conform itself to the winding course 

 of the valley it fills up. This is very marked in the Milam 

 glacier, which makes a great curve to the south as seen 

 from above, after coming for miles in a north-easterly 

 direction. It is joined also by other glaciers from the 

 various peaks, which unite into one great ice-lake. 



The great writer Lyall, who thought out many pro- 

 blems, comes, I think, to the conclusion that the eleva- 

 tion of a great mass of mountain like the Himalayan 

 range, composed of strata which, though now found miles 

 above the sea, were once formed perhaps as deep below 

 its surface, was a gradual and quiet process, and that such 

 movements of elevation or depression are going on under 

 our feet steadily, though unperceived. It is, however, 



* Sir Richard Strachey, R.E., in 1848 measured the movement of 

 the Milam glacier, which he describes as ten miles long, 4,000 feet 

 across, and as moving downwards at the rate, near its centre, of 44 feet 

 in thirty-two days. 



