Aug. 1849. DEBACLES. ARRIVE AT YEUMTONG. 115 



there, full of the sweet-scented Hierochloc grass, the Scotch 

 Thalictrum alpinum, and an Eriocaulon, which ascends to 

 10,000 feet. The old moraines were very difficult to cross, 

 and on one I found a barricade, which had been erected to 

 deceive me regarding the frontier, had I chosen this route 

 instead of the Lachen one, in May. 



Broad flats clothed with rhododendron, alternate with 

 others covered with mud, boulders, and gravel, which had 

 flowed down from the gorges on the west, and which still 

 contained trees, inclined in all directions, and buried up to 

 their branches ; some of these debacles were 400 yards 

 across, and sloped at an angle of 2° to 3°, bearing on their 

 surfaces blocks fifteen yards in diameter.* They seem to 

 subside materially, as I perceived they had left marks many 

 feet higher on the tree-trunks. Such debacles must often 

 bury standing forests in a very favourable material, climate, 

 and position for becoming fossilized. 



On the 30th of August I arrived at Yeumtong, a small 

 summer cattle-station, on a flat by the Lachoong, 11,920 feet 

 above the sea; the general features of which closely resemble 

 those of the narrow Swiss valleys. The west flank is lofty 

 and precipitous, with narrow gullies still retaining the 

 winter's snow, at 12,500 feet ; the east gradually slopes up 

 to the two snowy domes seen from Lachoong ; the bed of 

 the valley is alternately a flat lake-bed, in which the river 

 meanders at the rate of three and a half miles an hour, and 

 sudden descents, cumbered with old moraines, over which 

 it rushes in sheets of foam. Silver-firs ascend nearly to 

 13,000 feet, where they are replaced by large junipers, sixty 

 feet high : up the valley Chango Khang is seen, with a 

 superb glacier descending to about 14,000 feet on its south 



* None were to be compared in size and extent with that at Bex, at the mouth 

 of the Rhone valley. 



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