1862.] Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. 487 



of whitewash put on and brushed off. Or, if left undisturbed, the 

 small beetles and flesh eating larva will very beautifully clean in this 

 country heads thus dried with the flesh on them. The horns too of 

 the sheath-horned ruminants (antelopes, sheep, &c.,) require to be 

 touched with some preservative, especially where inserted in the 

 skin, as they are otherwise liable to be eaten and disfigured by in- 

 sects. 



July 7th, Mdhdsu.— -Having completed my preparations, I left Sim- 

 la on the 7th of July, and marched as far as Mahasu, the first bunga- 

 low on the new road. As usual on first starting, I had some difficulty 

 with the coolies, some of the loads proving too heavy, and I at that 

 time having several double loads carried by two men, a plan produc- 

 tive of much annoyance, and which I afterwards abandoned. The 

 bungalow, like all those along the new road, was a very clean and 

 comfortable one, and prettily situated in an open forest of the usual 

 character of the pine and cedar forests around Simla. As far as 

 Bowlee bungalow, the road is excellent, and the ascents and descents 

 are mostly very gradual. Between Bowlee and Saraon (a few miles 

 beyond which the" road terminates abruptly) the road is generally 

 good, but contains some very long and steep ascents ; the Nogri 

 bungalow being situated on a feeder of the Sutlej at about the height 

 of Bampore, and hardly, I should suppose, in a situation exempt from 

 malaria during autumn. 



The views obtainable from many parts of this road are beautiful 

 in the extreme, the Sutlej being often seen winding its way many 

 thousand feet below the road, through a wild rocky glen, bounded on 

 either side by precipitous mountains, clothed to their very summits 

 with primeval forest. In other places, extensive patches of cultiva- 

 tion and thriving villages may be noticed, embosomed in fruit trees, 

 among which the apricot, walnut and peach are most conspicuous, 

 and whose waving crops of batu, of a deep crimson when ripe, offer a 

 striking contrast to the paler and more subdued tints of other cereals. 

 The hills round Simla, however, are in many directions singularly 

 bare of trees, the station itself being rather centrally situated in a 

 wooded tract of rather circumscribed dimensions. All travellers in 

 the Himalayas are acquainted with the very capricious manner in 

 which one face of a hill will be clothed with forest, whilst the rest 

 is bare ; but much of the barenness of the hills round Simla is, I think, 



