500 Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. [No. 5 



than at the last village. Many of the cattle had long hair, due pro- 

 bably to an admixture of yak blood, but the place is too low and hot 

 for yaks to bear at this season, and I saw none before crossing into 

 Spiti. Blue pigeons very numerous. 



30th, Thorapa, 10548 ft.* (or Kajakajing). — The road up the valley 

 keeps along the course of the stream, through cultivation, and some- 

 times descends into its bed. At the village of Rupa, the last or high- 

 est up the valley, procured fresh coolies and pushed on a few miles to 

 the camping ground, at which is some cultivation but no village. On 

 the valley sides, noticed in places thick beds of river shingle and 

 boulder, sometimes 400 feet thick. Hills bare and uninteresting, 

 little game beyond a few chakor and pigeons, but procured the skull 

 of a snow bear shot two months previously, an old but small animal, 

 probably a female. These brutes often attack the flocks of sheep when 

 feeding on the mountains, and are accordingly destroyed, when they 

 appear near villages, all the inhabitants turning out for the purpose. 

 In general, however, the people of Bissahir and Kunawar are singu- 

 larly devoid, for mountaineers, of all taste for sport, though they will 

 occasionally beg a little powder and shot to kill birds with, but very 

 rarely. At the camping ground the wild or scentless briar with its 

 red hips abounded, and also a wild cherry bush two or three feet high, 

 with very palatable bright red fruit, no larger than large currants. 

 Apricot trees were also common, but the fruit, though plentiful, was 

 v ery small and unripe. 



31st, Saiido, 12451 ft.* — (Pamachan of the maps.) A very severe 

 and in places difficult march, the road sometimes a precipitous hill 

 side, covered with loose and very slippery slates where great care was 

 requisite to avoid dangerous falls. About half way, the path crossed 

 a broad moraine-like talus of rocky fragments, detached by frost, as I 

 suppose, from the high hill on the right, and as sharp and angular as 

 though fractured the previous year, though doubtless the accumula- 

 tion of ages. The last part of the road led in many places along the 

 face of vertical crags, where a single false step was inevitable death. 

 The footing was firm and rocky, but often so scanty as to render it 

 necessary to hold on pretty tightly by the hands as well. Early in 

 the day, met a number of Tartars from Spiti with a flock of goats, 

 sheep and donkeys laden with salt on their way to Sangnam. They 

 complained bitterly of the road, which I soon found they had ample 



