Nov. 1848. YANGMA CONVENTS. 235 



distance that they were continuous, and very barren ; 

 there were no traces of fossils, nor could I assure myself 

 of stratification. The accumulation was wholly glacial ; 

 and probably a lake had supervened on the melting 

 of the great glacier and its recedence, which lake, con- 

 fined by a frozen moraine, would periodically lose its 

 waters by sudden accessions of heat melting the ice of the 

 latter. Stratified silt, no doubt, once covered the lake 

 bottom, and the terraces have, in succession, been denuded 

 of it by rain and snow. These causes are now in opera- 

 tion amongst the stupendous glaciers of north-east Sikkim, 

 where valleys, dammed up by moraines, exhibit lakes 

 hemmed in between these, the base of the glacier, and the 

 flanks of the valleys. 



Yangma convents stood at the mouth of a gorge which 

 opened upon the uppermost terrace ; and the surface of the 

 latter, here well covered with grass, was furrowed into con- 

 centric radiating ridges, which were very conspicuous from 

 a distance. The buildings consisted of a wretched collection 

 of stone huts, painted red, enclosed by loose stone dykes. 

 Two shockingly dirty Lamas received me and conducted 

 me to the temple, which had very thick walls, but was 

 undistinguishable from the other buildings. A small door 

 opened upon an apartment piled full of old battered 

 gongs, drums, scraps of silk hangings, red cloth, broken 

 praying-machines — relics much resembling those in the 

 lumber-room of a theatre. A ladder led from this dismal 

 hole to the upper story, which was entered by a handsomely 

 carved and gilded door : within, all was dark, except from 

 a little lattice-window covered with oil-paper. On one 

 side was the library, a carved case, with a hundred gilded 

 pigeon-holes, each holding a real or sham book, and each 

 closed by a little square door, on which hung a bag full 



