1 16(S Visit to Melum and the Oonta [No. 132. 



122°. A party came in from Bhote, (or Tartary,) this forenoon, bring- 

 ing with them five ponies, three jubboes* and a flock of sheep. As they 

 approached the village, a party of musicians with tom-toms went out to 

 meet them, and serenade them in ; four of the ponies had riders, the 

 fifth led. The party has been eighteen days coming from Gurtope. 

 They say the snow on the Pass is mid-deep. | In the afternoon stroll- 

 ed up the Goree, and at the distance of a mile and half, or perhaps 

 a little more, saw the snow-bed whence issues the Goree ; it has a large 

 high bank with a complete earthy appearance, which stretches across 

 the valley from one range of mountains to the other, (some hundred 

 feet,) and the river (the people say) is not seen above this ; but at the 

 distance of perhaps about four or five miles, there is a small pool 

 of dark water which is very deep, and where the people sometimes 

 resort to bathe, (as a religious act.) One man who accompanied me in 

 ray walk had bathed in it, but did not go deeper than his middle. To 

 this pool of water, of forty or fifty haths or cubits in extent, the bed 

 of snow continues uninterrupted, with an unequal surface, having 

 numerous undulations. No water is visible beyond the pool above 

 mentioned. There is a very small stream 2 or 300 yards on this side 

 the snow- bed on the right bank of the river, to which the snow-bed 



* The cross breed of the Thibet yak and Hill cow, pronounced jooboos. — J. H. B. 



f Extract from Lieut. Weller' s Journal, May2bth, 1842.— " I went to see the source 

 of the Goree River, about a mile N. W. from Milum. The river comes out in a small 

 but impetuous stream, at the foot of apparently a mass of dirt and gravel, some 300 feet 

 high, shaped like a half moon. This is in reality a mass of dark coloured ice, (bottle 

 green colour,) extending Westward to a great distance, and covered with stones and 

 fragments of rock, which in fact form a succession of small hills. 1 went along this 

 scene of desolation for a long space, but could not nearly reach the end. Here and 

 there were circular and irregularly-shaped craters (as it were) from 50 to 500 feet 

 diameter at top, and some of them 150 feet deep. The ice was frequently visible on 

 the sides ; and at the bottom was a dirty sea-green coloured pool of water apparently 

 very deep. Into one of these craters 1 rolled down numerous large stones from off 

 the edge, and in a few seconds huge masses of ice rose from below, seemingly detach- 

 ed by the agitation of the water. The bases of the hills on either side, and frequently 

 far up their faces, are one succession of landslips, but from their distance I do not 

 believe it possible that the debris in the centre of the snow-bed valley can have fallen 

 there from the side hills. Query f May not a separate hill at some remote time, have 

 been gradually reduced by landslips, the Goree River and torrents in the rains car- 

 rying down the fallen earth and stones, and reducing the mass to what, we now see ? 

 Nagoo Boorha tells me, that his father (who lived to 98 years) remembered the source 

 of the Goree nearly opposite Milum, and Nagoo himself has seen the recession of the 

 snow-bed some 3 or 400 yards in the course of 40 years." 



