Physical Geography of the Himalayah Mountains. 279 



assessment, the small bulk which it occupies setting at de- 

 fiance all revenue regulations for its exclusion. 



Tobacco can no longer be cultivated with advantage here, 

 as the plant, although it thrives luxuriantly, is quite super- 

 seded by the superior quality of that imported from the 

 plains. In anticipation of details, which, under favourable 

 circumstances, I hope at some future period to be able to 

 lay before the Society, I shall submit a few general observa- 

 tions upon the geology of the districts, included under the 

 two divisions above mentioned ; if mere notices respecting the 

 surface rocks, occurring at different parts, with the elevation 

 of their outgoings, are entitled to that appellation. - 



Bundur Pooch and Sirga Rohini are the loftiest summits 

 of the snowy ridge here which I have seen. 



From these the Ganges, the Jumna, the Tonse, originate 

 to proceed southerly, and various feeders of the Sutluj in 

 a northerly direction. 



The country between them, and towards the Sutluj, as 

 viewed from the summit of the Manjhee ridge, between the 

 sources of the Jumna and Tonse, seems an extensive and 

 inaccessible waste of thickly grouped snowy summits, where 

 one would hardly imagine a living thing could exist. As the 

 streams descend, however, and their beds become more warm 

 and sheltered, a thinly scattered population occupies their 

 sides, immersed in filth, ignorance, and superstition, earning a 

 scanty and precarious subsistence by the cultivation of some 

 of the crops previously noticed, in artificial flats about the 

 village, by the transportation to the plains, or neighbouring 

 states, without any convenience from roads, or beasts of bur- 

 den, of some of their vegetable or mineral productions, but 

 chiefly by the produce of numerous flocks of sheep and goats, 

 which are driven to pasture higher and higher, as the melting 

 of the snows in spring leaves behind it a green and tender 

 herbage, and which again gradually descend lower as the 

 southing of the sun embrowns the surface by admitting the 

 gradual prevalence of nightly frosts. 



The same rapidity of vegetation which distinguishes the 

 summer of the polar regions, soon covers these upland pas- 

 tures with a thick and luxuriant drapery of beautifully flow- 



