128 A SuRVEY oF THE 
sharp points had been covered, it appears most likely that the very 
weighty falls of snow, which there must be here, in the winter, bring 
down with them pieces of rock, in the same manner as a larger snow 
ball would collect gravel, and carry it on with it in its course.—Masses 
of snow, falling from the high peaks which bound the snow bed, if they 
chanced to collect more, and to take a rounded form, would have a pros | 
digious impulse, ‘and might roll to the centre of the snow yalley, loaded 
with the pieces. of rock they had involved, 
Ir is not very easy to account for the deep rents which intersect this: 
snow bed, without supposing it to be full of hollow places,—It struck us, 
that the late earthquakes might have occasioned some of the rents.—I 
never saw them before on other snow beds, except at Jumnotri, where 
they are occasioned by the steam of the extensive range of boiling 
springs theres perhaps, there may be such springs here alsos they are 
frequent in the Himdlaya, and one might suppose they were a provision. 
of nature to insure a supply of water to the heads of the great rivers, in 
the winter, when the sun can have little power of melting the snow 
above those deep recesses. 
I wizi now proceed to give some account of the course of the river 
Jumna, within the mountains, and of ils spring at Jumnotri, which I 
also visited this year; the above remarks, respecting the Ganges, having 
already swelled this paper to too great a bulk, I wilk make those, regard- 
ing the Jumna, in as few words as possible-—In the maps published 
ten years ago, the Jumna is laid down as having a very long course 
