Page:Sikhim and Bhutan.djvu/114

 the glacier is very rough, with enormous holes and covered with huge masses of débris, and in this resembles that to the south of the Giucha-la. By climbing one of the hills to the north I had a very good view and could follow distinctly the moraines brought down by the different side glaciers, which are wonderfully well defined, chiefly by the different colour of the rocks in each, and these lines are continued for miles down the glacier with a very pretty colour effect.

From one of these side hills I had, early one morning, a magnificent view of Siniolchu, the finest snow peak in Sikhim. It was very early, and as the sun rose the clouds lifted for a few minutes, disclosing a lovely picture. The glacier and the hills immediately behind were in deep shadow, but Siniolchu was flooded with rosy light from the rising sun, and no mere photograph can give any idea of the beauty of the scene. It only lasted a few minutes, and then was blotted out by mist, and I never saw it again all the days I remained in the valley. We marched up the side of the glacier to a height of 17,500 feet, finding excellent camping grounds all the way between the lateral moraines and the hills on the north, and as far as I could judge, being no expert in ice craft, there would have been absolutely no difficulty in walking up to the top of either the 19,000 feet or the 17,500 feet gaps, as the upper ends of these glaciers appear perfectly smooth with apparently no big fissures and very little soft snow. Close to our camp on the north a magnificent glacier ran into the valley. In this the ice falls were magnificent and by far the finest I have seen.

Camping at such elevations in the midst of ice and surrounded by these grand snow peaks, the silence at times is almost oppressive. There is not a sound except an occasional weird noise caused by the fall of stones either on the ice of the glacier or into the water at the bottom of some vast ice pit. But yet there was life in these solitudes, as I saw several herds of burhel in the hills above the camp.