MAGNIFICENT SCENERY. 229 



must be looked for among the primeval ice and snows 

 of the innermost recesses of the Celestial Mountains, 

 but after leaving the frozen world of its birth it flows 

 through a perfect garden of delight, the grassy lawns, 

 planted here and there with picturesque clumps of fir- 

 trees, which line its banks resembling rather the neat 

 slopes of artistic and well-kept pleasure-grounds than 

 the untrimmed reaches of a natural wild. From the 

 green levels of the river-banks steep mountains rise on 

 either side, carpeted with grass and flowers, and in many- 

 parts well wooded with many kinds of bush and hand- 

 some fir, while above the line of trees weird crags and 

 pinnacles of rock protrude, throwing a sharp serrated 

 outline against the sky, and above all glistens a pure 

 white roof of eternal snow. As one turns each fresh 

 corner in one's onward march a new vista of beauty 

 opens out, combining in a single picture the wild 

 beauty familiar to those who have roamed among the 

 mountains on the west coast of Scotland, the wooded 

 magnificence of Kashmir, and the jagged outlines which 

 are so conspicuous a feature of the rugged Taurus 

 Mountains. I have seen many scenes which have im- 

 pressed me more with a sense of forbidding grandeur, — 

 the stupendous cone of Persian Demavend, the colossal 

 mountain masses on India's north-west frontier, the 

 extraordinary mountain labyrinths of Baltistan, and 

 above all, perhaps, the unequalled spectacle which 

 meets the eye as one gazes up at the gigantic peaks 

 reared aloft in every direction round the Bunji plain, — 

 but I can call to mind no prospect which has satisfied 

 the eye with quite the same sense of content as the 

 varied loveliness of the Oriyaas valley. 



The hunters of the country are the Kalmuks, like the 

 Kirgiz a race of Mongolian origin, but one which has 

 better preserved its type. Like the Kirgiz, too, they 



