114 Diary of an Excursion to the Shatool [No. 170. 



snow ; its right bank is rugged and craggy ; the left sloping and 

 covered with Cyananthus, &c., the general prospect limited and rather 

 uninteresting. A bitterly cold storm of sleet came down from the Pass, 

 just as our tents arrived, and we had hard frost all night, fully a 

 month before it is thought of at Simla. 



September 2\st. — Over the Roopin Pass to Rasur or Rasrung, called 

 also Surra Peechoo, distance eleven or twelve miles. We left Nooroo 

 at twenty minute past six a. m., and by an easy ascent reached the 

 crest of the Pass at a quarter past nine, including, as elsewhere, several 

 stoppages to collect seeds, &c. Heavy and suspicious masses of clouds 

 accelerated our departure, but the sun soon dispelled them, and re- 

 vealed the gigantic forms which surrounded us — the embodied frost- 

 giants of the Edda, and very unlike the guardian angels seen by 

 Gehazi to encompass the prophet. The northern declivity of the Pass 

 is quite a trifle in comparison with that of the Shatool. On the 20th 

 of September 1833, it was an unbroken and extensive sheet of snow, but 

 to-day we only met two beds of it near the summit ; nor is there any 

 Moraine, so terrible at the Shatool from its chaos of sharp gneiss 

 masses. Here the rock is chiefly flat micaceous slate, sometimes ap- 

 proaching to sandstone, and therefore of easy passage, though not 

 macadamized. The grand cliffs of the Shatool are also wanting here, 

 but on the left or east, there are some fine shivered pinnacles of rock, 

 plentifully strewed with snow- beds and sufficiently high 



' To shew, 

 That earth may reach to heaven, 

 Yet leave vain man below.' 



And nowhere does he appear vainer and more insignificant than 

 here, if we regard only his physical strength and size ; at the same 

 time, the mind of a Shakspeare or a Newton is more truly wonderful 

 and sublime than all the Ossas heaped on all the Pelions in the world. 

 The glory of the Roopin Pass consists in the cascades on its south side, 

 in its lovely valley, and in the views of the Buspa Dell and the Ruldung 

 pinnacles, which from this point are seen from NE. to E. rising from 

 great fields of the purest snow, untrodden by man, and probably by any 

 living thing. On the 21st September 1833, the thermometer boiled on 

 the summit of the Pvoopin at 186°: the elevation is reckoned to be 

 15,460 feet : and on that day about noon it stood in the shade at 49°, 



