134 MOMAY. Chap. XXIT. 



barren, and thrown obliquely across the valley, from north- 

 east to south-west, completely hiding the glacier. From 

 its top successive smaller parallel ridges (indicating the 

 periodic retirements of the glacier) lead down to the ice, 

 which must have sunk several hundred feet. This glacier 

 descends from Kinchinjhow, the huge cliff of whose eastern 

 extremity dips into it. The surface, less than half a mile 

 wide, is exceedingly undulated, and covered with large 

 pools of water, ninety feet deep, and beds of snow, and is 

 deeply corroded ; gigantic blocks are perched on pinnacles 

 of ice on its surface, and the gravel cones * are often twenty 

 feet high. The crevassing so conspicuous on the Swiss 

 glaciers is not so regular on this, and the surface appears 

 more like a troubled ocean ; due, no doubt, to the copious 

 rain and snow-falls throughout the summer, and the 

 corroding power of wet fogs. The substance of the ice 

 is ribboned, dirt-bands are seen from above to form long- 

 loops on some parts, and the lateral moraines, like the 

 terminal, are high above the surface. These notes, made 

 previous to reading Professor Forbes' s travels in the Alps, 

 sufficiently show that perpetual snow, whether as ice or 

 glacier, obeys the same laws in India as in Europe ; and I 

 have no remarks to offer on the structure of glaciers, that 

 are not well illustrated and explained in the above- 

 mentioned admirable work. 



Its average slope for a mile above the terminal moraines 

 was less than 5°, and the height of its surface above the sea 

 16,500 feet by boiling-point; the thickness of its ice 

 probably 400 feet. Between the moraine and the west 

 flank of the valley is a large lake, with terraced banks, 

 whose bottom (covered with fine felspathic silt) is several 



* For a description of this curious phenomenon, which has been illustrated by 

 Agassiz, see " Forbes's Alps," p. 26 and 347. 



