1862.] Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. 503 



hard day's work with a rasher of hacon and two cups of hot coffee, before 

 turning in for the night. The camping ground was four hundred feet 

 below the upper limit of furze and on the opposite side of a stream 

 issuing from the glacier, which had to be forded, a most unplea- 

 sant operation in such cold water, though not reaching much above 

 the knees. The glacier on the north face of the pass terminated in 

 a sheer wall of ice, from beneath which a muddy torrent was springing, 

 and the lateral moraine over which the road descended was but little 

 less abrupt. I crossed the Parangla pass, of nearly equal or perhaps 

 greater height, without any headache, the ascent being much more 

 gradual than at the Manirang, and to the excessive exertion which 

 is called for on this pass I attribute, quite as much as to its height, 

 the severe headaches from which all who cross it suffer. 



4<th, Mdni. — 11893 ft.* — A short march to the village whence the 

 pass receives its name. A little way below the camping ground, 

 passed the bluff termination of a moraine, some three miles below the 

 spot where the glacier at present terminates. The road generally 

 speaking is easy, over limestone rocks. Wild leeks were growing in great 

 profusion, though I had noticed none the other side of the pass. On 

 first entering the Spiti valley, the traveller is struck with the unex- 

 ampled bareness and sterility of the hills, which are devoid of even a 

 trace of trees and merely support a few grovelling furze shrubs on the 

 slopes at their base. Though a result of their geological structure, it 

 does not require much geological knowledge to be struck with the 

 extraordinary manner on which the strata composing them are twist- 

 ed about, or with their extremely sharp and serrated outline which 

 far surpasses any examples of the kind either in India or Europe. 

 Another marked peculiarity is the enormous heaps of angular debris 

 of rock, which in many places cumber the ground, and clearly result 

 from the severity of the winter frost, unmodified as to outline by rain, 

 which, in countries within range of the monsoon, would soon disperse, 

 or at all events greatly smooth down and outspread such heaps of loose 

 incoherent material. This last surface peculiarity far more impresses 

 one with the sense of desolation, and one's entire separation from the 

 Cis-Himalayan countries, than the bare hills whose mural preci- 

 pices and serrated peaks bound the landscape on every side. After 

 a sharp descent, the village of Mani is reached, situated at a height of 

 11939 ft.* on a plateau of old river alluvium. The heat here during the 



