BOTANICAL INFORMATION, 669 
To another friend Dr. T. Thomson writes, 
“Kashmir, April 26, 1848. 
“ My last letter to you was from Iskardoh, just previous to my 
leaving that place. I have now to give you an account of my 
travels and adventures on the road here, and of the appearance of 
' the country which I have now reached. As I believe I told you 
in my last was my intention, I started from Iskardoh on the 31st 
of March, ascending the Indus by the same road which I had pre- 
viously twice pursued in December. Some days of very mild 
sunny weather made travelling very pleasant, but the country had 
not the advantage of novelty, and the vegetation had made very 
little progress, so I was very eager to get on. The inclination of 
the bed of the Indus is, for the most part, very gentle, not rising, 
l estimate roughly, more than 1500 feet in the seven marches 
during which my road lay along it. For that period, therefore, 
the climate did not change very much, but on turning up the 
valley of the Dras river, a marked alteration for the worse was 
soon perceptible, the inclination of its bed being much more con- 
siderable, so that I ascended 6 or 700 feet in every march. On 
the second day I got among snow again. The weather, however, 
was so mild that there was no feeling of cold when in motion, 
and there would have been none at all but for the rapid thawing 
of the snow, which rendered it impossible to keep the feet dry. I 
was unfortunate too, in meeting with cloudy weather, which made 
the snow soft and yielding. Two rainy days and nights, also, 
were anything but pleasant. During one of these I was sta- 
tionary, having travelled. faster than the unpunctual authorities - 
had expected, so that the arrangements for my progress were not 
made. In the Dras valley there were usually about three feet of 
snow, but in very many places, from the steepness of the moun- 
tain sides the snow had, by sliding down, accumulated to a much 
greater depth. I forget whether I described to you these ava- 
lanches, of which I saw numbers on the Indus during and at the 
end of the winter, in my last letter. They consist of balls of 
snow of all sizes, from a few inches to a yard or more in didme- 
ter, these being of course partially obliterated where fresh snow 
. ._ 412 ur xg 
