292 Literary Intelligence, fyc. [No. 3, 



o'clock. The rest of the afternoon I spent in shooting myself a dinner 

 of one quail, and two plover for my guide, an Armenian sent by the 

 Prince. The ground gravelly, formed of debris from the mountain 

 supporting a shrubbery of Acacias, Zizyphus, Euphorbias, Cutch trees, 

 &c. &c, and a pretty good herbage ; besides the gravelly debris, 

 there being a good alluvial of rich red soil. 



The evening spent in getting information from my host the head- 

 man of the village and district. 



The morrow we started due east to the instep of the hills, and soon 

 came upon a kind of schist, ringing at the hammer, dipping as far as 

 I could see about sixty -five to the east and with its striae shown by 

 the weather-worn surface and by fracture running north and south, 

 huge masses were scattered over the surfaces, but much was evidently 

 in situ. Among it I came upon a mass of conglomerate, which seem- 

 ed to curve up from between the schist, and which consisted of pebbles 

 of quartz and large lumps, some a foot in diameter, others an inch or 

 less, of the magnetic oxide of iron, cemented together by siliceous (?) 

 matter into a hard mass. This I had plied with some crowbars, it 

 seemed to go deep and extended along to the foot of another little 

 hill. Going on, I found lots of the oxide imbedded in the soil' lying 

 on it, and sometimes firmly bound by the schistose rock. I ascended 

 a small hill, formed as of huge masses of the schist, piled one on 

 other, and after asking some more questions, determined, much to the 

 discomfiture of the military guard, to go on forthwith to Seebeing, a 

 village the other side of the immense mountain before us, and which 

 journey I had intended to make the next day. Mounting my pony, 

 followed by the village headman also mounted, I set out, then at 

 about 9 o'clock. Our path lay first north-east and east, winding 

 up between the hills, till we had evidently pierced the range, then 

 turning south, we had the high ridge on our right and west, another 

 high ridge on our left. Our path lying along a valley stretching be- 

 tween the two ridges. The summits were serrated, clothed and 

 fringed with trees, except where evident landslips had left great bare 

 perpendicular patches of red earthy-looking rock. The stones, and 

 bared rock of the same schistose character, apparently a schistose 

 limestone. Generally black by exposure and of most irregular weather- 

 ing, sometimes, however, the rock, though evidently of the same 

 nature, was whiter internally and weathered a clean cream colour with 

 a smooth surface. 



