Jan. 1849. VIEW FROM MON LEPCHA. 845 



glaciers of Pundim, and on the west those of Kubra, 

 forming great supporters to the stupendous mountain 

 between them. Mon Lepcha itself is a spur running 

 south-east from the Kubra shoulder : it is very open, and 

 covered with rounded hills for several miles further north, 

 terminating in a conspicuous conical black hummock * 

 called Gubroo, of 15,000 feet elevation, which presents a 

 black cliff to the south. 



Kinchin junga rises in three heads, of nearly equal height,! 

 which form a line running north-west. It exposes many 

 white or grey rocks, bare of snow, and disposed in 

 strata j sloping to the west; the colour of all which above 

 20,000 feet, and the rounded knobbed form of the summit, 

 suggest a granitic formation. Lofty snowed ridges project 

 from Kubra into the Ratong valley, presenting black pre- 

 cipices of stratified rocks to the southward. Pundim has a 

 very grand appearance ; being eight miles distant, and 

 nearly 9000 feet above Mon Lepcha, it subtends an 

 angle of 12°; while Kinchin top, though 15,000 feet 

 higher than Mon Lepcha, being eighteen miles dis- 

 tant, rises only 9° 30' above the true horizon : these 

 angular heights are too small to give much grandeur and 



* This I have been told is the true Kubra ; and the great snowy mountain 

 behind it, which I here, in conformity with the Dorjiling nomenclature, call 

 Kubra, has no name, being considered a part of Kinchin. 



f The eastern and western tops are respectively 27,826 and 28,177 feet above 

 the level of the sea. 



X I am aware that the word strata is inappropriate here ; the appearance of 

 stratification or bedding, if it indicate any structure of the rock, being, I cannot 

 doubt, due to that action which gives parallel cleavage planes to granite in many 

 parts of the world, and to which the so-called lamination or foliation of slate and 

 gneiss is supposed by many geologists to be due. It is not usual to find this 

 structure so uniformly and conspicuously developed through large masses of 

 granite, as it appeared to me to be on the sides of Kinchinjunga and on the top 

 of Junnoo, as seen from the Choonjerma pass (p. 264, plate) ; but it is sometimes 

 very conspicuous, and nowhere more than in the descent of the Grimsel towards 

 Meyringen, where the granite on the east flank of that magnificent gorge seems 

 cleft into parallel nearly vertical strata. 



