Sept. 1849. GEOLOGY AND BOTANY OF MUM AY. lilt 



clhnjhow, and seven sontli-west of Donkia : it is in the 

 same latitude as Palling, but scarcely so lofty. The mean 

 of fifty-six barometrical observations cotemporaneous with 

 Calcutta makes it 15,362 feet above the sea; nearly the 

 elevation of Lacheepia (near the Tunkra pass), from which, 

 however, its scenery and vegetation entirely differ. 



I pitched my tent close to a little shed, at the gently 

 sloping base of a mountain that divided the Lachoong river 

 from a western tributary. It was a Avild and most exposed 

 spot : long stony mountains, grassy on the base near the 

 river; distant snowy peaks, stupendous precipices, moraines, 

 glaciers, transported boulders, and rocks rounded by glacial 

 action, formed the dismal landscape wdiich everywhere met 

 the view. There was not a bush six inches high, and the 

 only approach to woody plants were minute creeping willows 

 and dwarf rhododendrons, with a very few prostrate junipers 

 and Ephedra. 



The base of the spur was cut into broad flat terraces, 

 composed of unstratified sand, pebbles, and boulders ; the 

 remains, doubtless, of an enormously thick glacial deposit. 

 The terracing is as difficult to be accounted for in this 

 valley as in that of Yangma (East Nepal) ; both valleys 

 being far too broad, and descending too rapidly to admit of 

 the hypothesis of their having been blocked up in the lower 

 part, and the upper filled with large lakes.* Another 



* The formation of small lakes, however, between moraines and the sides of 

 the valleys they occupy, or between two successively formed moraines (as I have 

 elsewhere mentioned), will account for very extensive terraced areas of this kind ; 

 and it must be borne in mind that when the Momay valley was filled with ice, the 

 breadth of its glacier at this point must have been twelve miles, and it must have 

 extended east and west from Chango Khang across the main valley, to beyond 

 Donkia. Still the great moraines are wanting at this particular point, and though 

 atmospheric action and the rivers have removed perhaps 200 feet of glacial 

 shingle, they can hardly have destroyed a moraine of rocks, large enough to block 

 up the valley. 



