262 EAST NEPAL. Chap. XL 



On the roots of one of the latter species a parasitical 

 Broom-rape (Orobanche) grew abundantly ; and about 

 the moraines were more mosses, lichens, &c, than I 

 have elsewhere seen in the loftier Himalaya, encouraged 

 no doubt by the dampness of this grand mountain gorge, 

 which is so hemmed in that the sun never reaches it 

 until four or five hours after it has gilded the overhanging 

 peaks. 



December 5. — The morning was bright and clear, and 

 we left early for the Choonjerma pass. I had hoped the 

 route would be up the magnificent glacier-girdled valley in 

 which we had encamped ; but it lay up another, con- 

 siderably south of it, and to which we crossed, ascending 

 the rocky moraine, in the clefts of which grew abundance 

 of a common Scotch fern, Cryptogramma crispa ! 



The clouds early commenced gathering, and it was 

 curious to watch their rapid formation in coalescing streaks, 

 which became first cirrhi, and then stratus, being apparently 

 continually added to from below by the moisture-bringing 

 southerly wind. Ascending a lofty spur, 1000 feet 

 above the valley, against which the moraine was banked, 

 I found it to be a distinct anticlinal axis. The pass, 

 bearing north-west, and the valley we had descended 

 on the previous day, rose immediately over the curved 

 strata of quartz, topped by the glacier-crowned moun- 

 tain of Nango, with four glaciers descending from its 

 perpetual snows. The stupendous cliffs on its flanks, 

 under which I had camped on the previous night, were 

 very grand, but not more so than those which dipped into 

 the chasm of the Kambachen below, Looking up the 

 valley of the latter, was another wilderness of ice full of 

 enormous moraines, round the bases of which the river 

 wound. 



