UP A HILL. 455 



and from many similar places in tlie Savitri basin, all over 1,000 feet 

 above the sea, and cut off by cascades and dry beds from the ingress 

 of lowland species. Amongst some 500 specimens, I could only find 

 three distinguishable species, two loaches and a DiscognatJms or 

 mountain carp, which seems to be that originally described by Dr. Day 

 as Maijoa modesta. The villagers say that these climb up the hill 

 sides when streaming with moisture during the monsoon. The tale 

 is strange ; but many of us have seen the Bhor Grhat in the rains, 

 and the walking fishes of our mud-flats and rock beaches, to say 

 nothing of the murrell and climbing perch. I, for one, have seen 

 young eels climbing over a wall at the Cutts of Coleraine, in Ireland, 

 with the help of a wet straw rope hung over it ad hoc. And I saw 

 Discognathus modesfus walk up the sides of my bath tub, and out of 

 it, not quite as easily as a gecko lizard goes up a wall, but without 

 doubt or hesitation. 



At Pachad, as may be gathered from the length of my remarks 

 on it ; one usually makes a day's or night's halt, using a light 

 " Kabul Pal" or a shelter (" Mandwa") built on notice by the hill 

 villagers. 



The upward path leads through a notch in the Eaigarh ridge ; 

 between the fort on one side and a lower and narrower hill on the 

 other, which is, at its further or northern end, separated from the 

 fine line of Grhats by one of those tremendous notches so charac- 

 teristic of the JN^orthern Sahj^adri Range, which cut olf from it almost 

 every so-called spur, north of our present point. But I am not 

 aware of any such notch to the Southward. The next great spur in 

 that direction, forming the Southern watershed of the Savitri basin, 

 is crossed by the great Koukan Road at a height (speaking from 

 memory) of about 1,300 feet, at the Kashede Pass, where it is 

 already many miles from the parent range. 



At the end next our pass the hill now in question possesses a 

 ''Hole in the "Wall,'' or rather two, being embrasures for two 

 guns opening westwards out of what was probably once a natural 

 cavern with its mouth east of the ridge, now called " Little 

 Gibraltar." 



It is extremely exasperating, on reaching this point, to see that 

 one must descend almost as far as one has climbed from Pachad ; 



