SUBALPINE REGIONS 179 



the dark, as I could not see the sights of the rifle, and that 

 I would only shoot them by daylight. The other bears 

 had all rushed simultaneously, luckily in different direc- 

 tions ; and next morning, as it rained all night, we could 

 find no tracks of them. There was a great extent of 

 very thick jungle all round, where bears could be hidden 

 all day, not to speak of caves in the hillsides not easy 

 to find ; and, as I had no time to spend, I had to leave 

 those bears unshot. Luminous sights for night use 

 would be extremely useful. 



Bears were very numerous from i860 to 1870 in 

 Kumaon, and on one occasion, when I went to Bagesar 

 fair to buy ponies and yaks' tails and Tibet curios in the 

 winter, I saw 400 black bear skins laid out on the ground 

 round the Deputy Commissioner's cutcherry, for which 

 he had paid the Government reward of four rupees each. 

 I carried away many of those skins to make sledges for 

 dragging away the earth on the Juli road works. 



The survey of the Pindar river valley, from the glacier 

 down to the junction with the Alaknanda, occupied some 

 time. The river, fed by the Pindari glacier, which 

 emerges from the vast snow-fields between Nanda Devi 

 and Nanda Kot, is at this season of the year, when the 

 snow is melting and the rains still coming down in torrents, 

 a great swollen flood, sweeping onward at first between 

 lofty snow-capped crags in a white and turbid stream. 

 The valley opens out lower down, and in places there are 

 cultivated flats near the river. The southern side espe- 

 cially slopes back from the stream in less precipitous 

 curves, the hills, covered with timber up to their summits, 

 forming very extensive forests. These slopes would be 

 very suitable for sliding timber down with a view to 

 floating in rafts to the plains, after the methods employed 

 in Germany and France, in the Black Forest and the Vosges. 



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