PHYSICAL FEATURES. 31 



During years of travelling in those high regions, I have searched, 

 but in vain, for striated and polished boulders amongst the moraines 

 of glaciers, such as one is familiar with in Alpine regions. Striae on 

 glacial boulders I have never met with in the Himalayas. I believe 

 the sub-serial denudation, and the rapid weathering of the rocks, must 

 obliterate anything like grooving or ice-scratches. 



The rock-walls which form the glacier troughs are almost invari- 

 ably roughly worn, obscured also by masses of debris, and are wanting 

 in those regular and smooth surfaces one usually associates with gla- 

 cier action. And the blocks which find their way through crevasses 

 into the interior, or towards the base of the glaciers, finally reach 

 the glacier stream, when they are invariably subjected to the ordinary 

 rolling and wearing action of water. The blocks embedded in the 

 accumulation of moraine matter at the lower end of the glaciers, I 

 found always to be angular or sub-angular very much weathered frag- 

 ments, on which I absolutely failed to discover glacial scratches. 

 The only traces of erosion, which might be attributed to glacial 

 action, I met with in the Mina valley. The gneiss walls which 

 form the right side of the M£na valley, near the village of this name, 

 are worn smoother than is usually seen in these high regions ; and 

 there are indistinct traces of parallel groovings, which possibly are of 

 glacial origin, but if so, it indicates that the glaciers of this valley 

 have once extended far below the level at which we find them at 

 present. 



It may be supposed that an area covered over to a large extent 

 with glaciers and perpetual snow is an extremely difficult one for the 

 explorer; indeed there are several portions of these mountains which 

 had to be left unexplored. By far the most inaccessible areas I 

 found on the north side of the Nanda Devi group of peaks, and 

 near the Badrinath and Mana peaks. Fortunately for me all these 

 localities are within the belt of crystallines, and the oldest and non- 

 fossiliferous rocks (the vaikrita and haimanta systems) ; all the 

 fossil-bearing strata of the succeeding systems are comparatively 

 free from snow and ice. The most inaccessible parts of the hills 



( 3i ) 



