808 Glaciers of the Pindur and Kuphinee Rivers. [Aug. 



shaped like a half moon. This is in reality a mass of dark-colored ice 

 (bottle-green color), extending westward to a great distance, and covered 

 with stones and fragments of rock, which in fact form a succession of 

 small hills. I went along this scene of desolation for a long space, but 

 could not nearly reach the end. Here and there where circular and 

 irregularly shaped craters (as it were) from 50 to 500 feet in 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-colored pool of 

 water, apparently very deep. 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." 

 Lieut. Weller also says of the same glacier in his journal published in 

 the Journal Asiatic Society, No. 134: — " The mass of desolation, as 

 described at the source of the Goree, continues thus far up — that is 

 about 4 miles, and how much farther no one will or can tell me. The 

 fissures hereabouts are narrow, instead of being crater-like, and the 

 ice when visible is more nearly the color of snow. On the opposite 

 (south) side, huge accumulations of ice and gravel are to be seen in the 

 openings between the hills ; — once on either side, I had a view of the 

 old ice high upon the hills ; its light sea-green color, with strongly 

 defined and fantastical lines of shape (castles, stairs, &c.) formed a 

 very pleasing and grand appearance." This glacier is known to be 

 6 or 7 miles long ; its lower extremity is at 11,600 feet above the sea. 



In the published journals of travellers in the Himalaya, that I have 

 seen, I have not met with any other accounts of glaciers sufficiently 

 distinct to be worth quoting, though we not unfrequently come across 

 a snow-bed that seems suspicious. I am however fully satisfied of the 

 actual existence of many other glaciers, both from the verbal accounts 

 of Mr. Batten, who has been a resident in Kumaon for many years, of 

 my brother, Mr. H. Strachey, who visited several of the passes into 

 Tibet last year, and of the Bhotias (the natives of the valleys im- 

 mediately below the snowy ranges), and from having myself had distant 

 views of several. 



From these sources I am able to affirm positively, the existence of 

 glaciers at the heads of the following rivers ; — viz., the Vishnoogunga 

 (near Budrinath) ; the Kylgunga, the Koourgurh, the Soondurdoonga, 



