122, J. F. CAMPBELL ON GLACIAL PERIODS, 
southern slopes, and up the face of Kanchinjunga, till they reach the 
tops and the ice, and rise high above the solid earth to 30,000 or 
40,000 feet and fly away. By watching for a fortnight I managed 
to see most of this Teesta basin and its edges and hills, in Bhotan 
25,000 fect high, distant more than 200 miles beyond the edge of 
Siccim. I could see three glaciers on the southern face of Kanchin- 
junga with their cracks and moraines, and with large blocks of fallen 
stone resting upon them in fresh snow. The biggest glacier is only 
about 8 miles long on the map. Away towards Thibet, I saw greater 
snow-slopes at the edge of the Teesta basin, and recognized the 
ground described by Hooker and Dr. Campbell, by Mr. W. T. 
Blanford and others. It is a narrow high country of glaciers and 
old glacier-marks, with numerous small lakes in it, all near to the 
highest grounds about the serrated edge of the basin 70 or 80 miles 
away. All the rest of the hollow, about 2000 square miles, below 
12,000 or 14,000 feet, is one great series of rain-furrows like those 
which I had seen in the north-west at three other hill-stations. 
The Darjeeling ridge is like the roof of a house, 6000 feet high, and 
all the other ridges are like it. The beds of gneiss pass horizontally 
through sections made at the top of the A to make room for a house 
to stand on the ridge. Eastward at sunrise I saw a serrated ridge 
of snow-hills at the watershed of Thibet, and a series of ridges with 
a pretty regular slope southward, to show what the Himalayan slope 
may have been like before it was furrowed by rains. As icicles 
under the eaves are to the roof of a house, so are these big glaciers 
to the rest of the hill-country. They may have shrunk, they may 
be growing locally or generally; but these glaciers of Siccim, which 
are the nearest to the equator of any known, are near their extreme 
size. There are no marks of any glaciers on the scale of the 
morning mists, which mark out the beds for glaciers on the scale 
required; by the Glacial period in India. The place where the 
Treesta enters the Terai is incomparable to Ivrea in Italy (see Section 
Y, for the records of glaciers there). 
40. This may show that climate does not depend upon iatitude. 
At Darjeeling my glass marked 23° at sunrise on the 6th of 
February, 1877; on the 8th, 40 miles away, it marked 58° in the 
Terai. At Calcutta it marked 60° for a week at sunrise, while snow 
fell heavily at 7000 feet at Darjeeling. On ground only 44 miles 
away from Darjecling, at 28,150 feet, the snow never melts, and 
glaciers exist. At Calcutta punkhas are used, while the Bhotias 
wear blanket-frocks and furs, and cover their brown faces with black 
unguents to prevent frost-bite. A local glacial climate is between 
lat. 28° and 27°N. I left a region of mist and cloud for a place where 
horses wear solar topes and die of sunstroke in the streets; within 
two months I was about lat. 45° or 46°, where my glass read about 
50° at the foot of the Alps at sunrise. The climate at Aosta is not 
much colder than the climate at Darjeeling. My glass was at 35° 
and it snowed heavily at Ivrea on the 17th of April. Snow lay 
on Mount Ida, on Etna, and Calabria in the same month; and snow 
fell at Malta in the end of March about the latitude of Cashmere. 
