Jan. 1849. THREATENING WEATHER. 353 



maplike patterns which its yellow crust forms on the 

 rocks. 



Of the blocks of gneiss scattered over the Jongri spur, 

 many are twenty feet in diameter. The ridge slopes 

 gently south-west to the Choroong river, and more steeply 

 north-east to the Ratong, facing Kinchin : it rises so very 

 gradually to a peaked mountain between Jongri and 

 Kubra, that it is not possible to account for the transport 

 and deposit of these boulders by glaciers of the ordinary 

 form, viz., by a stream of ice following the course of a 

 valley ; and we are forced to speculate upon the possibility 

 of ice having capped the whole spur, and moved down- 

 wards, transporting blocks from the prominences on various 

 parts of the spur. 



The cutting up of the whole surface of this rounded 

 mountain into little pools, now dry, of all sizes, from 

 ten to about one hundred yards in circumference, is a 

 very striking phenomenon. The streams flow in shallow 

 transverse valleys, each passing through a succession of 

 such pools, accompanying a step -like character of the 

 general surface. The beds are stony, becoming more so 

 where they enter the pools, upon several of the larger of 

 which I observed curving ridges of large stones, radiating 

 outwards on to their beds from either margin of the 

 entering stream : more generally large stones were deposited 

 opposite every embouchure. 



This superficial sculpturing must have been a very 

 recent operation ; and the transport of the heavy stones 

 opposite the entrance of the streams has been effected by 

 ice, and perhaps by snow ; just as the arctic ice strews the 

 shores of the Polar ocean with rocks. 



The weather had been threatening all day, northern and 

 westerly currents contending aloft with the south-east 



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