380 TERA.I. Chap. XVII. 



of its deep valleys no less strikingly resembles that of such 

 narrow arms of the sea (or fiords) as characterize every 

 mountainous coast, of whatever geological formation : such 

 as the west coast of Scotland and Norway, of South Chili 

 and Fuegia, of New Zealand and Tasmania. There are 

 too in these Himalayan valleys, at all elevations below 6000 

 feet, terraced pebble-beds, rising in some cases eighty feet 

 above the rivers, which I believe could only have been 

 deposited by them when they debouched into deep water ; 

 and both these, and the beds of the rivers, are strewed, 

 down to 1000 feet, with masses of rock. Such accumula- 

 tions and transported blocks are seen on the raised beaches of 

 our narrow Scottish salt water lochs, exposed by the rising 

 of the land, and they are yet forming of immense thickness 

 on many coasts by the joint action of tides and streams. 



I have described meeting with ancient moraines in every 

 Himalayan valley I ascended, at or about 7000 or 8000 

 feet elevation, proving, that at one period, the glaciers 

 descended fully so much below the position they now 

 occupy: this can only be explained by a change of climate,* 

 or by a depression of the mountain mass equal to 8000 

 feet, since the formation of these moraines. 



The country about Titalya looks desert, from that want 

 of trees and cultivation, so characteristic of the upper level 

 throughout this part of the plains, which is covered with 



* Such a change of temperature, without any depression or elevation of the 

 mountains, has been thought by Capt. R. Strachey (" Journal of Geological 

 Society"), an able Himalayan observer, to be the necessary consequence of an 

 ocean at the foot of these mountains ; for the amount of perpetual snow, and con- 

 sequent descent of the glaciers, increasing indirectly in proportion to the 

 humidity of the climate, and the snow-fall, he conjectured that the proximity of 

 the ocean would prodigiously increase such a deposition of snow. — To me, this 

 argument appears inconclusive ; for the first effect of such a vast body of 

 water would be to raise the temperature of winter; and as it is the rain, rather 

 than the sun of summer, which removes the Sikkim snow, so would an increase of 

 this rain elevate, rather than depress, the level of perpetual snow. 



