488 Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. \_No. 5, 



unquestionably produced by clearing ; and one of the most disagree- 

 able sounds to me, occasionally to be heard in Simla itself, is that of 

 the woodman's axe slowly but steadily clearing a way through those 

 umbrageous forests, at present the ornament and glory of the station. 

 Closely connected with this subject is that of the supply of water' 

 which of late years has been found to fail and prove inadequate to the 

 wants of the inhabitants ; this may in part arise from the growth of 

 the place, but the actual supply of water furnished by the springs 

 has, on undoubted testimony, alarmingly diminished of late years. 

 The authorities have driven a tunnel into the hill side not far from 

 the Church, with the view of tapping fresh sources of supply, but 

 taking the nature of the ground into consideration, I have no great 

 hopes of the success of the plan. A far more certain and practicable 

 method, it seems to me, would be to construct a series of dams across 

 the narrow nullah intersecting the station, giving rise thereby to a 

 number of small pools one above the other, whose aggregate capacity 

 would be very considerable, some of which might be reserved for 

 drinking, and the others for washing and general purposes. As the 

 nullah has a rocky bed, no difficulty would be experienced in con- 

 structing masonry dams of the requisite strength and proportions. A 

 few miles from Simla the road passes through a tunnel of some hun- 

 dred yards in length, excavated in massive schists, but very wet and 

 slushy under foot from incessant drippings from the roof, to drain off 

 which no provision appears to have been made. 



8th, Fagu, 8718 ft.* — This bungalow is situated on the old road, but 

 is much frequented being an easy march from Simla, and though 

 small, prettily situated. The road between Mahasu and Fagu is well 

 wooded and very picturesque, the road in many places affording a 



* All heights marked thus * are from observations made with two carefully 

 compared boiling-point thermometers by my colleague Mr. Mallet, and the few 

 taken by myself are made with an ordinary thermometer corrected by compari- 

 son with the above instruments. The tables used in calculation are Boileau's 

 tables published at Meerut in 1849. It is important to state this, as the tables 

 of Col. Sykes supplied with the boiling-point thermometers, (Casella's Thermo- 

 hypsometer) give a much too low result, amounting at the Parang Pass to a 

 difference — 991 — compared with result of a calculation on the same observation 

 by Boileau's formula, which, as far as my scanty means of verification go, appears 

 to give the more correct result. The following are the heights determined by 

 my colleague Mr. Mallet in a part of the valley unvisited by me. 



Shaikar, 10089. Changrizang, 12420. Hul'ing, 10598. 



Sumra, 10624. Lari, 10845. Thabo, 10804. Po, 11424. 



The heights are those of the camping grouud of the respective villages. 



