J. F. CAMPBELL ON GLACIAL PERIODS. BIL 
delta. The delta of the Dwina is strewed with glacial drift. The 
Ganges delta clearly is a mass of fine materials chiefly washed down 
from the Himalayas by rains and deposited in the sea. 
39. Sicctm.—tIn travelling 40 miles from the plains up to Dar- 
jeeling on foot and on horseback I found only marks of great pluvial 
erosion. If Kanchinjunga were many thousands of feet lower, and 
if the plains of India were level with this hill-station and reached 
to Thibet, the views of Kanchinjunga and Siccim might be compared 
to the famed look-out from the church-tower at Novara in Lombardy, 
Darjeeling is 7167 feet above the sea, and a hill behind the station 
on the same ridge is 8606. ‘The rainfall at places near is about 
200 inches. These spots are on the edge of the basin of the 
Teesta, which is about 80 miles long, 50 miles wide, and 27,000 
feet deep, according to the map. From Darjeeling the ridge 
slopes down about 6000 feet in four horizontal miles to the Run- 
geet, which is a branch of the Teesta. The whole drainage 
escapes into the Terai through a narrow V gorge. On the opposite 
north bank of the Rungeet, Kanchinjunga and a range of high 
grounds extending E.W. slopes upwards. The highest peak is 
28,150 feet high, distant 44 miles on the map. Behind the range 
is that of Mount Everest, the highest in the world, masked by Kan- 
chinjunga. The rest of the edge of this great hollow is a high 
jagged sierra towards Thibet, and a ridge about as high as the Dar- 
jeeling ridge, which divides the Teesta basin from the next basin 
which is eastward, in Bhotan. Beyond the southern edge of the 
Siccim basin there is no land southwards except the low plains of 
India. The basin of Siccim therefore holds a confined lake of air 
which belongs to the cold regions of high central Asia, as the waters 
in it belong to surrounding snows. The result is that a regularly 
intermitting cold wind pours out of these Himalayan basins with 
their rivers. At Hirdwar the wind is called the “ Dalu,” and is 
regular for months. It begins some three hours after sunset and 
ends about three hours after sunrise. At Dhada a similar river of 
cold air flows out of the gorge, and is visible with mist from Kangra 
in the iaorning. The lower air in these basins often is full of clouds 
and haze and dense mists, while the air above 7000 to 8000 feet is 
clear. At sunrise the river-courses in Siccim for eighty miles are 
often filled with flat grey clouds to a depth of some thousands of feet. 
They mark out the course of the stream of cold air; they also mark 
out the course for local glaciers, if they were now to fill these gorges 
on the scale of glaciers which filled Scandinavian dales during the 
Scandinavian local glacial period. When the air is warm at sunrise 
this deluge of mist often is 6000 or 7000 feet deep. Then it shows 
what the basin would be like if a glacial period filled it with vapour 
carried by winds from the southern ocean condensed and frozen, 
Sometimes it is possible to look out from these Indian hill-stations, 
over flat clouds which roof the plains, and to realize what is meant 
by a “continental ice-sheet” ten thousand feet thick and an ice- 
cap smothering the world. When the risen sun shines into the 
Teesta basin the lake of yapour boils, Clouds rise and climb up all 
