1835.] from Masurt to Gangautri. 693 



good deal of mica, and, rarely, garnets. The valley in which the river 

 flowed had become narrower day by day, and was now nothing but 

 a channel of the breadth of the water course, from which cliffs nearly 

 perpendicular rose, on either side, to the height of several thousand 

 feet, shewing a section of the different beds from the top to the bot- 

 tom. The rock was evidently approximating to a real gneiss, but it 

 was not until the third day's march from Butwaree, between Daugal 

 Dhurmsala and the village of Sookee, that a gneiss and mica slate 

 formation appeared in its usual features of grandeur, and with its 

 usually-accompanying minerals. Here the river flows in a cut 

 through a ridge, which to the west forms the snowy peaks from 

 which the Jumna takes its rise, and continuing to the east, always 

 above the line of forest, and often far above that of perpetual snow, 

 runs to the south of the temple at Gungotree. Bare precipices, thou- 

 sands of feet in height, and pinnacles thrust into the sky — those cha- 

 racteristic pinnacles which in other countries have received the names 

 of horns, spids, and aiguilles, and here are called by a term of similar 

 import, kantas, present themselves prominently to our view — and as we 

 climb over the ruins below, among blocks bigger than houses, by the 

 side of which the foaming river runs, we find a well-defined gneiss 

 and mica slate, with kyanite and garnet imbedded. A thin stra- 

 tum of coarse-grained snow-white marble was also seen. On 

 approaching the village of Sookee, white layers and veins were seen 

 in the cliffs that overhung us. They were composed of a coarse- 

 grained granite, containing crystals of black tourmaline imbedded. 

 This granite is seen in the mass a short distance further on, where 

 the river takes a sharp turn to the eastward towards Dilaree. Here 

 the precipices on the northern bank were composed of mica slate over- 

 laid by a rock, the rounded outlines and bare ruggedness of which 

 indicated granite. About a mile beyond Dilaree the line of junc- 

 tion changes from the horizontal to the vertical. Both rocks may 

 be traced in contact for several hundred feet upwards, but the slate 

 does not appear to have been at all disturbed by contiguity of the 

 granite. The dip is here, as it has been throughout the whole of our 

 journey, between N. and E., with little or no variation. We met with 

 granite further on, all the way to Gungotree — granite often having 

 mica rarely, and acicular crystals of black schorl abundantly imbedded. 

 Yet, besides the ridge of snowy " aiguilles," which runs three or four 

 miles to the south of us, and peers everywhere above the intermedi- 

 ate rocks, another similar one is seen to the north of us, which meets 

 the first at an acute augle, a short distance beyond the temple at 

 Gungotree. Both these ridges, from their peculiar outlines, must be 

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