52 Mr. Moorcroft's Letter on the Purik Sheep ofLadakh, (§r. 



more regular, nor so clean as those of this country. The Ladakli farmer 

 begins to work upon a soil consisting of the disintegrated materials of the 

 granite rock : out of which, speaking of the upland terraces, the felspar, 

 reduced to powder, in the process of decomposition, is carried by snow- 

 water to the flat surface, bordering the banks of rivers, where it stands in 

 beds of the finest porcelain clay. This, naturally most unproductive ma- 

 terial, he so manages, as to cause it to yield, year after year, in unvaried 

 succession, excellent crops of wheat and of barley, without failure, with- 

 out alternation, without degeneracy ! Agriculture has much to regret, 

 that such an observer, as my friend Mr. Marshall, was not the first Briton 

 to witness these practices, instead of an individual, whose thoughts have 

 comparatively been little directed to rural affairs. 



Few people know the full value of the saying, that " necessity is the 

 mother of invention." In respect to some of tlie first necessaries of life, 

 in this country, the adage is most strikingly illustrated ; but in others a 

 neglect prevails, with difficulty reconcileable to common sense. For in- 

 stance, the rivers abound with several varieties of large trout, easily taken. 

 Food for man is dear. Polyandry is tlie general custom. Nearly two- 

 thirds of the productive lands are appropriated to the support of an un- 

 productive priesthood ; yet fisli are not pressed into the service of the 

 table. Wood-fuel is scarce and dear, yet little or none is cultivated, ex- 

 pressly for this purpose, though the Thuja grows freely on some bordering 

 mountains ; the black and Lombardy poplar on stony steppes ; all the va- 

 rieties of willow and tamarisk, on the banks of streams ; and the Lonicera 

 Tartarica, dog-rose, gooseberry and currant-bush, near the base of lower 

 rocks. The springy bog beds, frequent at the foot of some ranges, would 

 yield osiers in abundance, but not one is planted. 



This is not the most extraordinary feature in the conduct of this extra- 

 ordinary people. That, which would give all necessaries, comforts, ele- 

 gancies, and superfluities, exists in profusion, neglected, and uncollected, 

 in the midst of a nation more miserably sordid and avaricious ( I speak of 

 the rulers), than any I have visited. Were I to credit the accounts of 

 some reporters, in respect to some districts in this vicinity, I should con- 

 sider the country as another El Dorado ; but I know that the beds of the 

 Sinke, the Singte, and of the Shqjuk rivers, abound with gold, in oblong 

 grains, and laminas, detached from their matrix, and bruised, broken and 

 flattened, in their journey down their stony channels. The governors of 



