1846.] and Boorun Passes over the Himalaya. 117 



Many of our Himalayan tourists, especially the earlier ones, have allow- 

 ed their imaginations to run away with their judgments, and have 

 dressed up their descriptions more in the style of Macpherson or of 

 Harris than of sober prose : but it must be admitted in extenuation, 

 that the reality of the scenery, and the champagne atmosphere, able to 

 drive all sadness but despair, have an inevitable tendency to exalt the 

 spirit to the etherial regions, which there, Chamseleon-like, naturally 

 assumes the tint of their deep native blue. Even in the physical de- 

 partment of the man, a greatly diminished dose of alcohol will suffice to 

 produce intoxication. The daily repetition, however, of the sublime 

 and beautiful, is very apt to create a revulsion of feeling, till at length, 

 to get rid of the perilous stuff which preys upon the heart, we take 

 refuge in apathy, and perhaps fall so low as to adopt the Frenchman's 

 panegyric, " Grande, magnifique, superbe — pretty well I" or at least to 

 swear with Akenside — 



' Mind, mind alone, bear witness heaven and earth, 

 The proper fountains in itself contains 

 Of beauteous and sublime.' 



After many delays from seed and plant-collecting, and a heavy storm 

 of rain and hail at the falls, we reached Rasrung at half-past 3 p. m. ; a 

 small sloping plot, covered with grass and flowers, just below the highest 

 birches on the right bank of the Roopin, which is here crossed by a 

 natural bridge of snow, still from twenty to twenty-five feet thick. 

 The usual encampment is a little lower down and on the opposite (or 

 left) side of the river, under a high cliff called Jeyral, where water 

 boils at 194°, which gives an elevation of 10,800 feet. Rasrung is about 

 11,000. The sward here, and at Seetee, is much cut up by an animal 

 like " a rat without a tail," which is figured in Royle's Illustrations, 

 and is also found on the choor. It takes two hours to reach the upper 

 water-fall from Jeyral, and four, the crest of the Pass. We had frost 

 all night at Rasrung. 



September 22nd. — To Jaka, ten miles, in six and a quarter hours. A 

 a cloudless morning, but we only reached our tents at 2 p. m. in time 

 to escape a heavy rain, which fell in snow on the Passes. The climate 

 up here is as "perfidious" as that of England : a sky without a speck 

 at six a. m. is overcast by noon : at 2 or 3 p. m. we have a storm, and all 

 is blue again : often however — and the phenomenon seems hitherto unex- 



