Southern Tibet : vol.2 / Page 285 (Color Image)

0285	Southern Tibet : vol.2

Strachey at once observed that the rivers came from glaciers. ›From the foot
of its nearer extremity the river, even here unfordable, rushes in a turbid torrent out
of a sort of cave, the top of which when I saw it was but a few feet above the
surface of the water. The end immediately over the source of the river is very
steep and of a dull black color.‹

He could not make out whether these glaciers had ever varied much from
their actual limits. The shepherds of the place believed they were gradually re-
ceding. Strachey believed they had formerly reached much further down.

He gives one extract from Lieut. WELLER who had been to see the source
of the Goree, one of the main feeders of the Gogra. The place is situated about a
mile N.W. of Milum, and Weller described it thus: ›The river comes out in a small
but impetuous stream, at the foot of apparently a mass of dirt and gravel some
300 feet high, shaped like a half moon. This is in reality a mass of dark-colored
ice, extending westward to a great distance, and covered with stones and fragments
of rock, which in fact form a succession of small hills.‹

This report, together with Hodgson's and his own observations is all Strachey
had heard about glaciers in the Himalayas, although he says he occasionally comes
across descriptions of snow-beds that seem suspicious. But from what he had seen
at a great distance, and from what he had heard of his brother Henry Strachey and
others, he was fully satisfied of the existence of many other glaciers in the Himalaya.¹

He enumerates several rivers, at the heads of which he could positively affirm
that glaciers were situated, most of them rising from Tresool and Nanda Devi.
Therefore he concludes that at the head of almost every high valley of the Himalayas
that descends from perpetual snow, there must be, as in the Alps, a glacier, and
that the Himalayas should be one of the most favourable fields for the investigation
of glacial phenomena.²

It is surprising that less than a hundred years ago glaciers were practically
unknown in the Himalayas and that such a scholar as ELIE DE BEAUMONT could
deny their possible existence. Here, as in so many other fields of physical geog-
raphy R. Strachey proved to be clear-sighted and strictly scientific and he gave a
strong impetus to subsequent researches. In the Kara-korums the case has been the

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books