THE SUTLEJ VALLEY 247 
such noble stems have to be felled to make way for 
the regeneration of their kind, for one knows that 
the commercial instincts of the present day will 
never permit the growth, through future ages, of 
similar giants of 20 feet in girth or more; their 
successors will be allowed to attain only a measure- 
ment of about one third of that circumference, and 
will be cut off in their early maturity at the age of 
about a century and a half. 
Above Kilba, the Baspa River flows into the 
Sutlej, and the traveller will be well advised to 
follow its course into the mountains, for he will be 
rewarded with a glimpse of a high-level village 
perched on the mountain slopes below the black 
rocks, and almost darker oaks and firs. At its feet 
a narrow valley twists through meadow-lands, 
dotted with walnut-trees, and the river loses itself 
in rugged forests ending in precipices and snow. 
We contemplated crossing the watershed between 
the Ganges and Sutlej Rivers, but the weather 
forbade; a cyclone descended on our tents and 
snowed us in for three days, while the villagers 
kept us from freezing by supplying braziers of live 
charcoal ; then, as the skies cleared, we fled to the 
south, were overtaken by another storm, and finally 
drove in rickshaws into Simla, over fifty miles of 
snow, in two days, our men’s feet paddling in the 
freezing slush until we ached to hear them. 
During this trip we lost two mules, killed by a 
panther ; another was seriously injured by a falling 
rock ; while one man was killed by falling through 
the flimsy balustrade of a wooden bridge. It is a 
six weeks’ journey from Simla to see the Sutlej 
