Himalayas

“ When God gave men tongues, he never dreamed that they would want to talk about the Himalayas; there are consequently no words in the world to do it with. It is given to some of us, as it was given to these Brownes, thus to creep and to climb up into the heart of them, to look down over their awful verges and out upon the immensity of their slopes, to be solitary in the stupendous surging, heaving mountain-sea that stands mute and vast here upon the edge of the plains of India. ”

“ In the long restful arcades of the forest, by the edges of the trickling mountain springs, the sward is gay with amaranth and marguerite, the pimpernel winks its blue eyes from beneath its shelter of tender green, and a hundred other nameless woodland flowers spangle the glades. Higher still and the whole wonder of the Himalayas is around me, one rolling mass of green, purple, and azure mountains, with a horizon of snow-clad peaks standing white and pure against the perfect blue of the sky. ”

“ Often, when overhead all was black with heavy rain-clouds, we would see a streak of brilliant light and colour flashing from the far horizon of the lake; while beyond it and beyond the bordering mountains, each receding range of which was of one more beautiful shade of purple than the last, rose once more the mighty axial range of the Himalayas, at that great distance not harsh in their whity coldness, but softly tinted with a delicate blue, and shading away into the exquisite azure of the sky. ”

“ The lower Himalayas are at first extremely disappointing. The scenery is enormous but not grand, and at first hardly seems large. The lower parts are at first sight a series of gently undulating hills and wooded dells; in some places it looks as if one might almost hunt the country. It is long before you realise that it is all on a gigantic scale; that the quickset hedges are belts of rhododendrons of full growth, the water-jumps rivers, and the stone walls mountain-ridges; that to hunt a country like that you would have to ride a horse at least two hundred feet high. ”

“ The Himalayas are not a line, but a great country of mountains. By one who stands on some lofty pass or commanding point in Dir, Swat or Bajaur, range after range is seen as the long surges of an Atlantic swell, and in the distance some glittering snow peak suggests a white-crested roller, higher than the rest. The drenching rains which fall each year have washed the soil from the sides of the hills until they have become strangely grooved by numberless water-courses, and the black primeval rock is everywhere exposed. ”

“ From this elevation we enjoyed extensive and still different views of the Himalayas, and their diadems of frosted silver flaked with gold, while close at hand were seen the hundreds of thrifty tea plantations decking the sloping hill-sides. There are no roads at these extreme heights; it is all climbing to reach them, and the path so narrow that visitors advance only in single file. ”

“ And now we begin the ascent, turning hither and thither, as the road winds along the sides of the mountain. The slope of the Himalayas is not a smooth and even one, rising 185 gently through an unbroken forest. The mountain side has been torn by the storms of thousands of years. In the spring, when the snows melt and the rains come, every torrent whose rocky bed is now bare, becomes a foaming flood, rushing down the hills, and tearing its way through the lowlands, till lost in the Jumna or the Ganges. ”

“ It is true that, to a traveller approaching the Himalayas from any part of the great plain of India, these mountains present the appearance of a single range, stretching continuously along the horizon from east to west. This, however, is a mere optical illusion; and, instead of one range, the Himalayas may be regarded as a congeries of mountain ridges, covering a superficies of 200,000 square miles, and running in as many different directions as there are points in the compass. ”

“ But in the Himalayas there is hardly a lake to be seen until one enters the Vale of Cashmere. Then the Alps have more of the human element, in the picturesque Swiss villages. The traveller looks down from snow-covered mountains into valleys with meadows and houses and the spires of churches. But in the Himalayas there is not a sign of civilization, and hardly of habitation. Occasionally a village or a Buddhist monastery may stand out picturesquely on the top of a hill, but generally the mountains are given up to utter desolation. ”

“ We were now on the heights whence the water flows down to three of the northern tributaries of the Brahmaputra; the third flows to the Chaktak-tsangpo, which runs to the west of Saka-dzong. Here and there the snow, owing to wind, melting and freezing again, has assumed the form of upright blades, two feet high and sharp as a knife. Far to the south appear parts of the Himalayas, and we are here in a grand landscape of wild and fantastic relief. ”

“ Northward, and not thirty miles distant, the Himalayas reared their heaven-piercing summits, peak succeeding peak, and crag succeeding crag, far as the eye could reach, from east to west a glittering chain, while here and there the light clouds which hung upon its rocks and precipices became thinned, till they vanished altogether, or, rising in denser masses from some dark valley, obscured the lower portions of the range, only to give relief to the summits and elevate them in appearance—an aid they little needed, for the height of the lowest level of the chain is upwards of 15,000 feet. ”

“ The whole horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the plains, which stretch away into the region of sunshine and fine weather, in one boundless flat.
In the distance, the courses of the Teesta and Cosi, the great drainers of the snowy Himalayas, and the recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with difficulty traced at this, the dry season. The ocean-like appearance of this southern view is even more conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the clouds arranging themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion. Endless strata run in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon ”

“ It is a grand and exalted feeling that takes possession of [265] you now, when you have lost sight of the plain, and the work-a-day life being carried on there, when you are alone looking down into the spur ranges, a tumultuous mass of peaks below, and then raise the eye to the storm-beaten ones above, so near the sky as to be known only to the eye of their Creator. The Himalayas, meaning in Sanskrit the "abode of snow," are the grandest mountain-wall that Nature has ever raised. ”

“ The Himalayas are flanked by the teeming population of India and the scattered nomadic tribes of Tibet. Mountains often draw equally clear cut lines of cleavage in temperature. The Scandinavian range concentrates upon Norway the warm, soft air of the Atlantic westerlies, while just below the watershed on the eastern side Sweden feels all the rigor of a sub-Arctic climate. In history, too, mountains play the same part as barriers. They are always a challenge to the energies of man. Their beauty, the charm of the unknown beyond tempts the enterprising spirit ”

“ Thus much was à priori certain, that this region presented the grandest problems which remained still unsolved in the physical geography of Asia. There must exist one or more mountain systems running parallel with the Himalayas and the Karakorum range; there must be found peaks and ridges on which the eye of the explorer had never lighted; turquoise-blue salt lakes in valleys and hollows reflect the restless passage of the monsoon clouds north-eastwards, and from their southern margins voluminous rivers must flow down, sometimes turbulent, sometimes smooth. ”

“ But the Himalayas are high and clad with gigantic glaciers. Much ice grinds much mud on those snow-capped summits. The rivers that flowed from the Roof of the World carried down vast sheets of alluvium, which formed fans at their mouths, like the cones still deposited on a far smaller scale in the Lake of Geneva by little lateral torrents. Gradually the silt thus brought down accumulated on either side, till the rivers ran together into two great systems—one westward—the Indus, with its four great tributaries, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravee, Sutlej ”

“ On the north and south its boundaries are sharp and clearly defined; the northern is formed by the central lakes discovered by Nain Sing and myself, and the southern by the unheard-of Indus-tsangpo valley. In breadth it is inferior to the Himalayas, and its peaks are lower, but the heights of the Trans-Himalayan passes are considerably greater than those of the Himalayas. The average height of the five following Himalayan passes—Shar-khalep-la, Man-da-la, She-ru-la, No-la and Kore- or Photu-la—is 16,736 feet, while the average height of my first five Trans-Himalayan passes is 18,400 feet. ”

“ But to see the Himalayas in all their majesty we must still keep our faces to the east, and travel on towards the great central knot, where Mount Everest and the Kanchanjanga spring nearly 30,000 feet, about five and a half miles, towards the sky. ”

“ The Himalayas are not so much a chain of mountains as a mountainous country, some eighty miles broad and several hundred long—a country composed entirely of mountains and valleys with no large plains or broad plateaux. ”

“ The Himalayas not only form a double wall along the north of India, but at both their eastern and western extremities send out ranges to the south, which protect its north-eastern and north-western frontiers. On the north-east, those offshoots, under the name of the Naga and Patkoi mountains, &c., form a barrier between the civilized districts of Assam and the wild tribes of Upper Burma. On the opposite or north-western frontier of India, the mountainous offshoots run down the entire length of the British boundaries from the Himalayas to the sea. ”

“ It further possesses a grand mountain range, rivalling the Himalayas in altitude and far surpassing them in extent, and which, being wholly situated within the region and running through eighty degrees of latitude, offers a variety of conditions and an extent of mountain slopes, of lofty plateaus and of deep valleys, which no other tropical region can approach. ”

“ How did the Himalayas affect history?—serving as a barrier, hindering the migration of both man and beast, and protecting the people from invasion? Among mountain people many ancient customs are preserved. ”

“ Here we are in proximity to and in full view of the Himalayan range of mountains, the loftiest on the globe. The lowest peak is over twenty thousand feet in height; the highest exceeds twenty-eight thousand. Upon the range rest eleven thousand feet of perpetual snow. There can be no animal life in that Arctic region—only the snow and ice rest there in endless sleep. The Himalayas—meaning the "Halls of Snow"—form the northern boundary of India, and shut out the country from the rest of Asia. ”

“ They offer some prospects wider and grander than any in South America, such as that from Phalut on the borders of Nepal and Sikkim, where forty peaks, each of which exceeds twenty thousand feet, stand up east, north, and west of the beholder.66 The capital difference between the two chains, besides that difference in the forms which arises from geological character, the Himalayas being composed of ancient crystalline rocks, while many of the high Andes are of volcanic origin, lies in the fact that the south side of the Himalayas receives abundance of rain and is covered with dense forests. ”

“ All annual and deciduous vegetation had long past, and the lofty Himalayas are very poor in mosses and lichens, as compared with the European Alps, and arctic regions in general. The temperature fluctuated from 22 degrees at sunrise, to 50 degrees at 10 a.m.; the mean being 35 degrees;* [This gives 1 degrees Fahr. for every 309 feet of elevation, using contemporaneous observations at Calcutta, and correcting for latitude, etc.] ”

“ The Himalayas had been seen very distinctly throughout the day, so that the rain must have been local: the height of the rise was three feet.
We left Hurreekee on the 8th at 10 A.M., the river up to this time (9th) presents the same monotonous appearance—sandy banks clothed with grasses, intermixed with Jhow here and there, and occasionally Æschynomene, and Typha. Very few villages have been passed, nor does the rare occurrence of topes indicate that there are many near it. The channel has been throughout much subdivided, and flats are of frequent occurrence. ”

“ The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die. ”

“ Amongst mountaineers, who has not at some time or another looked at the map of India, wishing at the same time for an opportunity to visit the Himalaya? to see Kanchenjunga, Devadhunga, Nanda Devi, Nanga Parbat, or any of the hundreds of snow-clad mountains, every one of which is higher than the loftiest peaks of other lands? to wander through the valleys filled with tropical vegetation until the higher grounds are reached, where the great glaciers lie like frozen rivers amidst the white mountains, while the green pasturages and pine woods below bask in the sunshine? ”