288 KHASIA MOUNTAINS. Chap. XXIX. 



hence contrasting remarkably with the Kala-panee. It 

 derives its mud from the decomposition of granite, which 

 is washed by the natives for iron, and in which rock it rises 

 to the eastward. Thick beds of slate crop out by the 

 roadside (strike north-east and dip north-west), and are 

 continued along the bed of the river, passing into con- 

 glomerates, chert, purple slates, and crystalline sandstones, 

 with pebbles, and angular masses of schist. Many of 

 these rocks are much crumpled, others quite flat, and they 

 are overlaid by soft, variegated gneiss, which is continued 

 alternately with the slates to the top of the hills on the 

 opposite side. 



Small trees of hornbeam grow near the river, with Rhus, 

 Xanthoxylon, Vaccinium, Gualtheria, and Spiraea, while many 

 beautiful ferns, mosses, and orchids cover the rocks. An 

 elegant iron suspension-bridge is thrown across the stream, 

 from a rock matted with tufts of little parasitic Orchidece. 

 Crossing it, we came on many pine-trees ; these had five- 

 years' old cones on them, as well as those of all succeeding 

 years ; they bear male flowers in autumn, which impreg- 

 nate the cones formed the previous year. Thus, the cones 

 formed in the spring of 1850 are fertilised in the following 

 autumn, and do not ripen their seeds till the second 

 following autumn, that of 1852. 



A very steep ascent leads to the bungalow of Moflong, 

 on a broad, bleak hill-top, near the axis of the range (alt. 

 6,062 feet). Here there is a village, and some cultivation, 

 surrounded by hedges of Erythrina, Pieris, Viburnum, 



glassy waved layer of hornblende. This polishing of the surfaces is generally 

 attributed to their having been in contact and rubbed together, an explanation 

 which is wholly unsatisfactory to me; no such motion could take place in 

 cleavage planes which often intersect, and were it to occur, it would not produce 

 two polished surfaces of an interposed layer of a softer mineral. It is more 

 probably due to metamorphic action. 



