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Journal of a trip through Kunawur, Hungrung, and Spiti, undertaken 

 in the year 1838, under the patronage of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, for the purpose of determining the geological formation 

 of those districts. — By Thomas Hutton, Lieut., S7th Regt. N. I. 

 Assistant Surveyor to the Agra Division. 



PART II. 



On the 15th of June, the thermometer, at sunrise, indicated 47°, 

 at an elevation of 10,522 feet above the sea. This morning we 

 started betimes, and once more proceeded in search of the habitations 

 of men. 



About a quarter of a mile from camp, we had to cross a torrent, 

 whose waters were luckily at this early hour of the day, reduced by the 

 frosts on the heights from which it came, but yet its force was such, 

 that it required some care and exertion of strength, to enable a man to 

 stem it safely. Seeing me make preparations to wade through it with 

 the rest, a couple of sturdy Tartars at once came forward, and while 

 the one stooped down and offered me his back, the other, before I could 

 say a word, had bound me to it with his red sash, like any other load, 

 and away they trudged into the stream, where after several awkward 

 stumbles, caused as much by their laughter at my apparent uneasiness 

 as from the violence of the stream, they gained the opposite bank in 

 safety, and released me from bondage. They then gave assistance to 

 several of the loaded people, and seemed to care little about the cold- 

 ness of the stream, although its temperature was 36°, and the hour of 

 the morning, seven. 



The streams, whose waters are supplied from the melting of the 



snows above, are often only passable in the early hours of the day, 



when their sources are still bound up by the frosts of the preceding 



night, swelling so rapidly towards the afternoon, under the influence of 



the sun's rays, that neither man nor beast can stem them. I saw an 



instance of this in a stream at Hungo, where at four o'clock in the 



afternoon its breadth was upwards of twenty feet, while at seven next 



morning, when I crossed it, it was, though still strong and violent, 



barely eight feet across. 



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