DEHRA DOON. 5 



stick, forming a kind of running-block. The load, animate 

 or inanimate, is sent sliding along down the rope as far as 

 its weight will take it, and then hauled up to the opposite 

 side by a guy-rope attached to the running-block. Although 

 there was little or no danger, I was glad to find myself on 

 terra firma again after being swung over, the more so as I 

 had just seen the load of baggage that preceded me left 

 dangling in mid-air above the roaring torrent, until the guy- 

 rope, which had parted company with the block, was re- 

 placed by an acrobatic individual who clambered out on the 

 main rope to repair damages. There is another kind of 

 jula, made of ropes formed of twigs, twisted and bound 

 tightly together, which, though more elaborate in its con- 

 struction, requires more nerve to cross. For the crosser has 

 to perform a sort of dance on the slack-rope, with nothing 

 to prevent his falling from it into the water but two smaller 

 ropes for his hands to clutch on either side. 



Before descending from Mussoorie to the Dehra Boon, 

 through which a portion of our route lay, the view of this 

 beautiful valley, as we looked down on it from the heights 

 abruptly rising 5000 or 6000 feet above it, was singu- 

 larly imposing. Some fifty miles long by about twelve 

 miles broad, and over 2000 feet high, this forest-clad valley 

 or " Boon " lies along the base of the mountains, its wide- 

 spreading jungles interspersed here and there with open 

 tracts of long grass, irregular patches of reclaimed land, and 

 intersected by broad beds of shingle and sand, where the 

 tortuous streams flowing along them shone afar in the sun- 

 light like bright threads of silver. On the east and west it 

 is bounded by the rivers Ganges and Jumna respectively, 

 where they first issue from the vast mountain-gorges through 

 which they roll down from their sources among the eternal 

 snow ; on the south, by the low but very rugged and wooded 

 belt of the Sewalik hills separating it from the plains be- 

 yond, which fade gradually away in the distant heat-haze 

 that blurs the horizon. 



Our way next led through these dense woods, in which, 



