295 x 240 mm. View looking towards the ice cave at the foot of the Gangotri Glacier, with the Bhagirathi River issuing from its mouth. The Ganges is formed by the confluence of the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda Rivers. The latter part of this caption ('elevation 22,621 ft') has been added here incorrectly: it should form part of the caption of Y3022C/37, ‘From here to the glacier was the roughest piece of work we had yet met with; it was one continuous scramble amongst huge stones, rough jungle, and fallen rotting trees, and our progress was very slow. However, we reached our destination at last, and I felt a degree of satisfied curiosity, and that I ought to consider myself a privileged mortal in being permitted to gaze on this the first visible issue of the mighty and holy Ganges from the vast ice beds which cradle its birth. The ice cave at the foot of the glacier is remarkably like that of the Buspa, which I have before described [Y3022C/32]. The glacier terminates in perpendicular walls of ice, at the base of which is the arched cavern from whose semi-transparent recesses a large body of water issues in a turbulent flood. The pilgrims would not find it half so limpid here as it is lower down; they thus show their wisdom in taking it from Gangootru. I, of course, took two or three negatives of this holy and not altogether unpicturesque object’, (B.J.P., 18 March 1870, p. 126). Bourne no. 1543.