1862.] JVotes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. 509 



cliffs bounding the valley. The height of this gravelly mass mainly 

 depends on that of the cliff at whose base it has accumulated, but 

 not uncommonly reaches to 1,500 or 2,000 feet above the river. This 

 incoherent formation has in some places been denuded by atmos- 

 pheric action, the scanty streams occasionally traversing it beiug 

 adequate for the purpose, not to mention the former action of the Spiti 

 river, but it is in some places cemented into a firm rock, by the per- 

 colation of water depositing calc tuff. This is the case at Danka, 

 a place built on a mass of the consolidated debris rising abruptly 

 1,100 feet above the river, which by the action of the elements is 

 worn into the most fantastic pinnacles and perfectly honey-combed 

 with irregular cavities, produced by the falling out of huge blocks or 

 the removal of loose earthy portions of this extremely heterogeneous 

 mass. Grerrard in his own quaint language thus describes the place, 

 " Danka itself is perched upon a projecting ledge of conglomerate, 

 which the erosion of time has filed into slender spires, and the perco- 

 lation of snow eaten away at their bases, till they present a group 

 of turrets and ravines almost deceiving the senses by the effect of 

 natural agents." The camping ground is a small grassy plot some 

 three hundred feet beneath the village, which looks down upon it 

 from the brow of a beetling cliff, round which were flying many blue 

 pigeons and red-legged crows. A small stream close by contained 

 a small species of Lymnsea (X. truncatula) , the sole fresh water mol- 

 lusk I noticed in the valley. 



6t7i, Geumal. — Crossed the Lingti river by a small suspension 

 bridge, about six miles from. Danka to the village of Sanglang. From 

 this to Greumal, which must be at an altitude of nearly 15,000 feet, 

 the road ascends the steep face of the hill, over beds of limestone in 

 which the forms of pentacrinites may be distinguished, till near the 

 village, which is situated among some open flat valleys on dark 

 shales and behind which the hills rise some hundred feet more. The 

 high land on which Greumal is situated is cut into a narrow wedge 

 by the Spiti river and a considerable feeder of the Lingti river which 

 enters below Sanglang, and viewed from Mani has the appearance of 

 an isolated, flattish hill, of horizontal strata, (their dip from that 

 aspect not being seen) rising with majestic cliffs some four and a half 

 thousand feet above the Spiti river which flows at its foot, though in 

 reality it is merely the termination of a lofty spur of land running 



