Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/234

30 small glaciers of the second order. From the terminal moraines which abutted on the main river, it was very evident that at some time glaciers had descended the whole length of the lateral ravines. A great flood of water-borne detritus had just rushed out of one of these ravines, the muddy water of which was still flowing on as we arrived at its bank.

We encamped at a spot known as Tsok, where one of the main glaciers of the river (Biaho) comes into view. This glacier leads up to the Mustakh Pass: and every ravine had its strip of ice extending down to the river, or very near it, and running upwards some 5 or 6 miles.

On the morning of the 4th I ascended the ridge above our camp, whence I got a first view of a magnificent glacier, with three large feeders stretching away beyond it, the sources of the Biaho river. I wished to gain the range at the head of the spur, but the ice was so steep that it was altogether impossible. From this point the Punmah glacier is seen in great beauty: it terminates in an enormous chaotic expanse of débris, the lines of moraine not being distinguishable from one another for some miles up, where they run on till they end in a few narrow bands of dirty ice. Except for a few black slopes of ice and the terminal cliff with its caverns and black rents, one could hardly, even on closer acquaintance, believe a glacier to be there, so completely is its lower portion concealed beneath the materials it has brought down.

After finishing my work, and taking a sketch of the view upwards, I descended in the direction of a much broken glacier which comes from the north-west. This glacier has in some past years been upwards of 100 feet thicker than it now is, as shown by its lateral moraines, and the grooved and scratched rocks on either side. Past the terminal moraine of this lateral glacier a level plain extends for 2 miles to the foot of the great Punmah glacier, the elevation of which is 10,318 feet. Here our camp was pitched just beyond the reach of the blocks and stones, which, detached by the melting of the ice, kept incessantly coming down the ice-cliff, now one or two at a time, and now in great masses. As we sat over our fires, the noise was to be heard late into the night, but at longer intervals as the night advanced. We were now fairly within an ice-bound region, which for bleakness and grandeur is perhaps not to be surpassed: its glaciers exceed those of any of the mountain-ranges of the world, and are equalled only by those of arctic or antarctic regions, for though the Himalayas of Nepal are quite as high as those of the Mustakh, yet being so much further south, and of less breadth, the glaciers have not a like extent.

Starting upwards from Punmah, the track skirts the right bank of the glacier for a distance of 2 miles, following the hollow way