l.—AH ACCOUNT OF GURHWAL, A DISTRICT 

 IN THE HIMALAYAS. 



By Dr WILLIAM WATSON, Presidext. 



{Read Nov. 27, 1889.) 



I HAVE chosen, as the subject of my introductory address, an 

 account of Gurhwal, a country in the heart of the Himalayas. 

 It is a district not often visited by Europeans, though the 

 town of ISTaini Tal, the summer capital of the Lieutenant- 

 Governor of the North-West Provinces, lies not far from it on 

 the east, and the town of Mussourie, a favourite sanitarium, 

 not far from it on the west. 



Gurhwal, meaning " the land of forts " or " the land of 

 streams " — both derivations are possible — is about a hundred 

 miles long by some fifty miles broad. It practically consists 

 of the drainage-area of the great river Alaknanda, one of the 

 two great streams which unite to form the Ganges river. The 

 drainage-area of the other stream, the Bagirathi, belongs to 

 the native principality of Tehri, sometimes called Independent 

 Gurhwal. British Gurhwal, of which alone I treat, is in the 

 central part of the Himalayas, where the mountains are not 

 so high as they are farther east ; but it has many peaks in it 

 over 22,000 feet. The best known are — Trisul, 23,382 feet; 

 Nundadebi, 25,661 feet; Budrienath, 22,901 feet; and Kid- 

 arnath, 22,853 feet. Before the conquest of India by the 

 East India Company, Gurhwal was a Hindoo principality, 

 tributary to the Emperor of India at Delhi. During the 

 period of confusion, when the Delhi empire was falling to 

 pieces, and a new empire, whose capital was at Calcutta, was 

 rising in its place, Gurhwal was conquered by the Goorkhas, 

 a semi-savage tribe of Mongolian origin. 



The King of Gurhwal was killed in 1803, and his family 

 fled, to live in exile in the plains. In 1815 the army of the 

 East India Company, consisting of three regiments of native 



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