Page:Picturesque Nepal.djvu/37

 mountain, and began to walk about the valley in all directions.

So runs the legend, and the cleft in the mountain caused by Manju Sri's sword is called the Kot-bar or “sword-cut” at the present time. It constitutes the pass or channel between the Phulchoah and Champadevi hills, through which the Baghmatti River leaves the valley. This ancient and artistic fancy differs very little from modern scientific fact, for there is little doubt that this part of Nepal was in remote ages a mountain lake, enclosed in the hollow of the same circular range of hills by which the valley is surrounded at the present day. "It is probable that in consequence either of one of those subterranean convulsions common to all mountain districts, or of the gradual but continuous elevation from its bottom, or from both causes combined, the lake burst its boundaries on its southern side, and that a large portion of its waters escaped into the lower hills through the channel which is now the bed of the Baghmatti River. At the present day the continuity of the mountain barrier around the valley is