M% Account of Captain flodgson’s Journey to the 
mg in. A man sank into the snow, and was got out, not with- 
out some delay. The bed of the Ganges is to the right, but 
quite concealed by the snow. 
44 In high hope of getting on to what may be at the top of 
the acclivity, we have come on cheerily over the hollow and 
treacherous compound of snow and rubbish ; but now, with 
bitter regret, we both agree that to go on is impossible. The 
sun is melting the snow on all sides, and its surface will not bear 
us any longer. I have sunk up to my neck, as well as others. 
The surface is more and more ragged, and broken into chasms, 
rifts, and ravines of snow, with steep sides. Ponds of water 
form in the bottoms of these, and the large and deep pools at 
the bottoms of the snow hollows, and which were in the earlier 
part of the day frozen, are now liquid. It is evident, from the 
falling in of the sides of the rents in the snow, that there are 
hollows below, and that we stand on a treacherous foundation. 
It is one o’clock, and the scene full of anxiety and awe. The 
avalanches fall from Mount Moira with the noise of thunder, 
and we fear our unsteady support may be shaken by the shocks, 
and that we may sink with it. 
44 Had it been possible to have got across the chasms in the. 
snow, we should have made every exertion, so anxious were we 
to get forward ; but onward, their sides were so steep, and 
they appeared of such great depth, that I do not think it would 
be possible to pass them (this year at least), even if the snow 
were not, as at this hour, soft, and the bottoms of the chasms 
filling with water. Be that as it may, they are now utterly im- 
passable. At this season snow must fall here whenever it rains 
below ; so that it does not acquire such hardness at the top, as 
it does on the avalanches we have hitherto passed, where no 
new snow at present falls. We now set out on our return, and 
not too soon, as we found, for the snow was so soft, and the in- 
crease of the water so great, that though we went with the utmost 
possible expedition, it was only by two hours and a half hard la- 
bour of wading and floundering in the snow, and scrambling 
among rocks, where they would give a footing, that we reached 
the turf, tired and bruised with falls, and the skin taken off 
from our faces* and hands, by the sun and drying wind of these 
elevated regions.” 
