SPm VALLEY, &c. 253 



The winters are followed by a degree of warmth equal to the 

 summers of the south of England, and a far more powerful sun, but with 

 a more variable diurnal temperature. Upon the elevated table land of 

 Rupshu, or at the tenanted environs SpUi, whatever be the degree of 

 midday heat, it flies oft" so rapidly in the thin air, when the sun ceases to 

 shine, that the nights of those regions offer an extreme contrast in their 

 chilliness, the range of temperature in the twenty-four hours often 

 exceeding 40°. In insulated elevations this would not amount to 15°. 

 Towards the end of August, the climate of the middle regions oi SpiH had 

 a day temperature of 83° ; and clouds of dust wheeling along the river 

 bed, and sometimes a weak and transitory peal of thunder gave the 

 scene a more tropical complexion than would readily be conceived 

 possible at an elevation between twelve and thirteen thousand feet 

 above the sea, and in a parallel of 32,^° of latitude. At Dankar, which 

 verges upon this last level, my small tent was but a feeble screen against 

 the solar rays, the thermometer on the table rising to 110°; but in so 

 rarified and elastic a medium this accumulation of heat is very fluc- 

 tuating, for, when it rains, the air at midsummer is chilled down to a 

 degree very uncomfortable to the feelings, and the cliffs in the immediate 

 vicinage of the villages are often sprinkled with fresh snow. In the 

 vallies of Riipshu, at a mean elevation of sixteen thousand feet, where the 

 maximum temperature may be estimated at 75°, it snows occasionally in 

 July, and freezes always at night* ; yet such and even loftier situations 



* INlooncuoFT, in traversing this tract at midsummer, encountered a fall of snow, which however 

 vanished during tlie sun's course. M. Csoma df. Kciros, the Hungarian traveller, had a more 

 frightful picture of the rigor of the climate in an adjacent tract Za/is/uir, where, on the day of the 

 summer solstice, the ground was sheeted with a fre>h fall of snow, and in the beginning of September 

 the saine scene was renewed while the crops were still uncut. iMooiiCROFr when encamped on the 

 shore of Lake Mansarovara, had his tents covered several inches deep with snow on the 10th of I 

 August, with frosty nights in July, wlien approaching the forks of the Indus : — facts of themselves 

 (in so low ft parallel of latitude,) demonstrating vast height, and in connexion witl> analogous 

 observations upon the Isothermal lines in Ih'ipshu (ifwc had not Barometrical levels of the Satlej i\t. 

 ShipM and Behliitr, and Captuiii Webb's depression of the river from Niti pass) ntTording presumptive 

 inferences Ibr [ilaciiig that lake upon the very verge of seventeen thousand feet. 



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