Vazeeri Rupi, the silver country of the Vazeers, in Kulu; its beauties, antiquities, and silver mines. Including a trip over the lower Himalayah range and glaciers. With numerous illustrations - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 Excerpt: ...mere journey from the top of a modern glacier. For instance, see the rocks up the Shigri Glacier, some lying on the surface of the ice not far from the top, which is not far from 20,000 feet high, are already round, but the masses that are now day by day descending in that enormous stream of ice, which is over 200 feet thick and a mile or more across,--these are not round, but the greatest portion of them as square or sharp as when they separated from their parent mountain. That the stream of ice continues in motion I proved by careful observation, but there seemed no motion in any portion of such glacier--on which I spent many hours on several occasions--to account for the great attrition necessary to produce such rounding results. Even in the case of the rocks decomposing, they usually do so according to their sedimentary deposit or formation; even granite will decompose more in one direction than another, especially as the climate or conditions affect the potass in the component parts, the feldspar, and the mica. Besides, huge rounded boulders of gneiss are met with at the top of Hamta Pass above the clayslate and sandstone, with which they have no affinity or connection, and may be found on the summits of still higher mountains close by. That they have been ejected from volcanoes is a favourite theory, but in theory we do not find the ejections from volcanoes to be rounded rocks, but rather the reverse, sharp-pointed fragments of all shapes and sizes, except lavas, &c.; but gneiss boulders could not have been ejected in a lava or molten state, and still retain the original stratification of its ingredients. Besides, there are immense masses of metamorphic rocks scattered about, which are still harder of texture, and though they seem to have been aff...