668 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
time an exceedingly interesting fact. I do not think it likely 
that they could exist much higher; the same point seems to be 
about the highest level of human habitation and of cultivation. 
* My future destination is very undecided. My own plans are 
fixed enough, but I do not know whether they will be approved of. 
I shall leave this in two or three days for Jamu, going up the 
valley, and crossing by the Banahal pass into the valley of the 
Chenab. I go to Jamu to get rid of my collections, which are 
now very bulky. Jamu is on the edge of the plains, and I shall 
there be able to put them on camels, and send them to Ferozepore 
where my other collections are. The distance from this is sixteen 
days’ journey, and I shall traverse on the way every climate, from 
perpetual snow to the belt of tropical forest. My harvest, there- 
fore, ought to be very rich. From Jamu my wish is to ascend 
the Chenab to a little above Kishtawar, thence due east across a 
snowy pass to the Zanskar river, which flows north to join the 
Indus through a Tartaric climate. It has appeared to me, on 
due reflection, that the country which for botanical objects is 
- most important to visit, of all those in that part of the world 
to which access is practicable, is Ladakh and Nubra, the botany of 
which is, I believe, quite unexplored. The few plants which 
Moorcroft collected seem to be mostly either from this valley or 
from the neighbourhood of Dunkar in the Piti valley, and their 
number, even were they all Ladakh plants, is, in my opinion, 
quite significant. My route would, therefore, be down the Zans- 
kar river to its junction with the Indus, then a few marches down 
the Indus to a place called Himis, where there is a pass across 
the mountains to the valley of the Shayuk, up which river I 
should like to march to Nubra, and thence to travel across the 
mountains to the pass which leads over to the Karakoram* range 
to Yarkund, and beyond that pass is Chinese territory into which 
there will be no possibility of penetrating. I should therefore 
return by Ladakh again into Kashmir about the beginning of 
September, and I should then proceed in October and November 
through the lower range of mountains to our own provinces." - 
* Information has arrived (Nov. 1848), of Dr. Thomson having actually reached - 
the Karakoram range. ove 
