202 The Flooding of the Indies. [No. 3. 



in description, clear ice of various tints of green, and deep crevasses 

 crossed by snow bridges, and with comparatively clean water running 

 within them. The formation in this case was lime-stone, in the 

 former case granite. With regard to the magnitude of these glaciers 

 I need only say that I travelled nearly a whole day along one 

 which was upwards of fourteen miles in length, varying in width from 

 half a mile to two miles, and several hundred feet in depth. 



The glaciers are, it is well known, in constant motion ; their pro- 

 gress being subject to the same laws which regulate the motion of 

 rivers. As they advance, their ends melt away and the Moraine gets 

 washed down by the streams that issue from the body of the gla- 

 ciers. The flow of one glacier measured by Prof. Forbes showed 

 an onward movement of about 450 feet per annum, and it is evident, 

 that where a glacier is cut off above the melting point by a stream 

 running past its end, this motion must make it tend very consider- 

 ably to encroach into the valley of the stream. 



A landslip in one of those huge banks is quite a conceivable con- 

 tingency, and in no case more likely than when the glacier protrudes 

 with a narrow base and extended top from a small feeding glen com- 

 ing in, nearly at right angles, into a narrow valley, whose stream 

 crosses the path of the glacier, washing away the narrow foot which 

 the mass behind protrudes, and on which it rests. This foundation 

 being once undermined, the falling forward of a piece of the gla- 

 cier is the result to be expected ; and it is possible that this result 

 often takes place, but that it is not often that circumstances so com- 

 bine as that the process is delayed till a mass of formidable dimen- 

 sions topples over. 



The remarkable opacity of the water of the Shayok, caused by the 

 glaciers I have described, struck the Messrs. Schlagiiitweit when 

 carrying on their observations in the neighbourhood, and by adopt- 

 ing a simple test of comparison, they satisfied themselves that in 

 this character it exceeded the water of any stream which they had 

 encountered. 



The third point is the "length of time the obstacle remained." 

 On this head the only information to be obtained is native, and 

 that is always vague with regard to matters of time. The warning 

 that came down the river purported to bear date the 2nd July, but 



