Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/197

Rh only a few hours. It cannot always be so bad as that at Masúri in summer, but still the place must be exceedingly wet, cold, and disagreeable during the period of the monsoon; and it is no wonder that, at such a season, the residents of the Dehra Doon much prefer their warmer and more protected little valley below.

Notwithstanding the attractions of the "Himalayan Hotel," I would recommend the visitors to Masúri to get out of it as soon as possible, and to follow the example of the American who said to me after forty-eight hours he could stand it no longer, and that he wanted "to hear them panthers growling about my tent." The two great excursions from this place are the Jumnotri and the Gangotri peaks, where the sacred rivers, Jumna and Ganges, may be said to take their rise repesctively. These journeys involve tent-life, and the usual concomitants of Himáliyan travel, but they are well worth making; for the southern side of the sunny Himáliya in this neighbourhood is grand indeed. It is only fifteen marches from Masúri to the glacier from which the Ganges is said to issue, though, in reality, a branch of it descends from much further up among the mountains; and these marches are quite easy except for nine miles near to the glacier, where there is "a very bad road over ladders, scaffolds, &c." It is of importance to the tourist to bear in mind that, in order to pursue his pleasure in the Himáliya, it is not necessary for him to descend from Masúri to the burning plains. The hill-road to Simla I have already spoken of. There is also a direct route from Masúri to Wangtú Bridge, in the Sutlej valley, over the Burand Pass, which is 15,180 feet high, and involving only two marches on which there are no villages to afford supplies. This route to Wangtú Bridge is only fourteen marches, and that place is so near to Chini and the Indian Kailas that the tourist might visit these latter in a few days from it, thus seeing some of the finest scenery in the snowy Himáliya; and he could afterwards proceed to Simla from VVangtú in eleven marches along the cut portion of the Hindústhan and Tibet road. There is another and still more interesting route from Masúri to the valley of the Sutlej over the Nila or Nilung Pass, and then down the wild Buspa valley; but that pass is an exceedingly difficult one, and is somewhere about eighteen thousand feet high, so no one should attempt it without some previous experience of the high Himáliya; and it is quite impassable when the monsoon is raging, as indeed the Burand Pass may be said to be also. The neophyte may also do well to remember that tigers go up to the snow on the south side of the Himáliya; and that, at the foot of the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks, besides "them panthers," and a tiger or two, he is likely enough to have snow-bears growling about his tent at night.

I had been unfortunate in not having obtained even a single glimpse of the snowy Himáliya from the plains, or from any point of my journey to Masúri, and I learned there that they were only visible in the early morning at that season. Accordingly, I ascended one morning at daybreak to the neighbouring military station of Landaur, and there saw these giant mountains for the first time. Sir Alexander Burnes wrote in his "Travels into Bokhara," &c. — "I felt a nervous sensation of joy as I first gazed on the Himalaya." When Bishop Heber saw them he "felt intense delight and awe in looking on them." Even in these anti-enthusiastic times I fancy most people experience some emotion on first beholding those lofty pinnacles of unstained snow, among which the gods of Hindústhan are believed to dwell. From Landaur a sea of mist stretched from my feet, veiling, but not altogether concealing, - ridge upon ridge of dark mountains, and even covering the lower portions of the distant great wall of snow. No sunlight as yet fell upon this dark yet transparent mist, in which the mountainous surface of the earth, with its black abysses, seemed sunk as in a gloomy ocean, bounded by a huge coral-reef. But above this, dazzling and glorious in the sunlight, high up in the deep blue heavens, there rose a white shining line of gigantic "icy summits reared in air." Nothing could have been more peculiar and striking than the contrast between the wild mountainous country below — visible, but darkened as in an eclipse — and these lofty domes and pinnacles of eternal ice and névé. No cloud or fleck of mist marred their surpassing radiance. Every glacier, snow-wall, icy aigiulle, and smooth-rounded snow-field, gleamed with marvellous distinctness in the morning light, though here and there the sunbeams drew out a more overpowering brightness. These were the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks, the peaks of Badrinath and of the Hindu Kailas; the 