THE HIMALA YAS 125
`He sees at one glance the shadowy valleys from which shining
mist-columns rise at noon against a luminous sky, the forest ridges,
stretching fold behind fold in softly undulating lines-dotted by the
white specks which mark the situation of Buddhist monasteries-to
the glacier-draped pinnacles and precipices of the snowy range. He
passes from the zone of tree-ferns, bamboos, orange-groves, and dal
forest, through an endless colonnade of tall-stemmed magnolias, oaks,
and chestnut trees, fringed with delicate orchids and festooned by long
convolvuluses, to the region of gigantic pines, junipers, firs, and larches.
Down each ravine sparkles a brimming torrent, making the ferns and
flowers nod as it dashes past them. Superb butterflies, black and
blue, or flashes of rainbow colours that turn at pleasure into exact
imitations of dead leaves, the fairies of this lavish transformation scene
of Nature, sail in and out between the sunlight and the gloom. The
mountaineer pushes on by a track half buried between the red twisted
stems of tree-rhododendrons, hung with long waving lichens, till he
emerges at last on open sky and the upper pastures-the Alps of the
Himalaya-fields of flowers : of gentians and edelweiss and poppies,
which blossom beneath the shining storehouses of snow that encompass
the ice-mailed and fluted shoulders of the giants of the range. If there
are mountains in the world which combine as many beauties as the
Sikkim Himalayas, no traveller has as yet discovered and described
them for us.'
The line of perpetual snow varies from 15,000 to 16,ooo feet on the
southern exposures. In winter, snow generally falls at elevations above
5,000 feet in the west, while falls at 2,500 feet were twice recorded in
Kumaun during the last century. Glaciers extend below the region
of perpetual snow, descending to 12,000 or 13,000 feet in Kulu and
Lahul, and even lower in Kumaun, while in Sikkim they are about
2,000 feet higher. On the vast store-house thus formed largely depends
the prosperity of Northern India, for the great rivers which derive their
water from the Himalayas have a perpetual supply which may diminish
in years of drought, but cannot fail absolutely to feed the system of
canals drawn from them.
While all five rivers from which the Punjab derives its name rise
in the Himalayas, the Sutlej alone has its source beyond the northern
range, near the head-waters of the Indus and Tsan-po. In the next
section are found the sources of the Jumna, Ganges, and Kali or Sarda
high up in the central snowy range, while the Kauriala or Karnali,
known lower down in its course as the Gogra, rises in Tibet, beyond
the northern watershed. The chief rivers of Nepal, the Gandak and
Kosi, each with seven main affluents, have their birth in the Himalayas,
which here supply a number of smaller streams merging in the larger
rivers soon after they reach the plains. Little is known of the upper
courses of the northern tributaries of the Brahmaputra in Assam ; but
it seems probable that the Dihang, which has been taken as the eastern
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