Page:Picturesque Nepal.djvu/110

 appear, and then the vaporous curtain closes over, leaving us gazing at a white veil of mist. The snows and distant mountains are hidden behind a bank of lowering clouds, so that the landscape seems to continue indefinitely into the Beyond. Every now and again a stronger breeze tears great rifts in the moving mass of clouds, and expansive tracts of the sunlit opalescent country flash into view, with huge dark shadows charging over the green and gold, giving a glorious depth of light and shade to the whole scene. Glimpses of the three cities of the valley are permitted us at intervals—Katmandu, Patan, and Bhatgaon—each vignetted within its own diaphanous frame of mist, brown blots of innumerable roofs, Katmandu showing up most distinctly on account of the large white modern edifices which comprise its palaces and public buildings.

The drop down of 2000 feet from this point to the level of the valley is performed by a track, the gradient of which—if such it can be called—is simply terrific. It scrambles down the mountain-side and through a grand forest of trees like a sheer torrent of boulders