348 A TRANSFORMATION-SCENE. 



trade with the Hoonyas. Here I bade farewell to my 

 worthy friend Puddoo and his Bhotia companions, who 

 were all about to set out again for Hundes on business 

 of their own. 



At Tapoobun I left the low hot route by which I had 

 travelled up, and returned over the middle ranges by a 

 higher and more beautiful one. An ascent of about 

 5000 feet from the river, partly through a forest of 

 large hazel trees not bushes brought us to a small 

 green flat near the ridge of a spur of Trisool, where wild- 

 flowers and wild strawberries vied with each other in their 

 abundance. 



During the day the clouds had been dull and lowering, 

 -veiling the mountain - tops deeply in mist, but towards 

 evening they began to lift and disperse, and never in my 

 wanderings over many parts of the globe have I seen 

 anything to equal the marvellously grand and expansive 

 panorama which the rising curtain of sun-illumined, rose- 

 tinted vapour gradually disclosed to view. It was indeed 

 a splendid final transformation-scene, so to speak, in this 

 vast theatre of nature I was leaving, and will ever remain 

 deeply engraved on my memory. Eastward, to the right, 

 over a rugged foreground of huge fragments of grey rock, 

 and the irregular line of pointed plumes of the dark-green 

 pines shooting up, tall and straight, from the mountain-side 

 below, rose the noble snow-cone of Doonagiri in bold relief 

 against an intensely blue firmament ; whilst the more distant 

 crest of Kamet (25,400 feet) reared itself among a medley 

 of frozen peaks, glaciers, and vast untrodden snow -fields 

 lying in dreamy magnificence away northward. Nearer, 

 and more westward, across the profound hazy depth of 

 the intervening valley of the Doulee, mighty phalanxes of 

 rock-panoplied giants, mantled in violet, purple, and blue, 

 and helmeted with eternal snow, stood resplendent in the 

 golden glory of sunset, keeping watch, as it were, around 



