there four miles above the sea, drove away the thought of discomfort.
From the top of the pass of Chang La, ten days before, I had looked to the southwest across the Indus valley to the middle range of the Himalayas, and had been impressed by the evenness of the sky-line brought out in the accompanying photograph. At an earlier date, when looking northward from the lamasery of Himis, I had noted the same feature in the main range to the northwest of Chang La. Now, from my nameless mountain, the view seemed, at first sight, to be of a different nature. It was characterized by sharp, freshly-cut forms. Closer examination, however, showed that there were three kinds of slopes. The youngest were the steep valley sides due to glaciation, and rising two or three thousand feet above the streams. Above them, and often merging into or undercut by them, there were less precipitous, but, nevertheless, very steep young slopes due to the ordinary non-glacial processes of erosion. Higher yet, the mountain tops, for the most part, were characterized by gentler slopes and occasional smooth crests. Some of these appear in several of the illustrations of this chapter. If the gentler slopes are reconstructed, a subdued mountainous country is produced, with a topography like that of New England, old mountains with gentle slopes rising sometimes into " Monadnocks " four or five thousand feet above the general level.
Farther north, we found that the deep young inner gorge of the Shyok River grows shallower, and finally merges into the upland plain of Depsang near the centre of the Karakorum plateau. The topography of Depsang is of the same
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