1840.] Journal of a trip through Kunawur, fyc. 503 



dung, and of Chism and Keburr, the two last being also on different 

 banks of the river ; and in Kunawur the names of Dabling-Doobling 

 are always taken together, though they belong to different villages. 



The crops at Leedung were very poor and backward, and it is 

 a great chance if they ripened before the snow fell again ; the 

 cultivation higher up the river too, is seldom ready for the reaper 

 before the end of September, and is often wholly destroyed by an early 

 fall of snow. 



In the morning I started with about a dozen people up the mountain 

 path, and after a toilsome ascent of 3,000 feet, reached the pass above 

 Leedung. Beyond this was stretched a wide and undulating plain, 

 shelving gradually to a stream far away in the distance ; the pass and 

 all the neighbouring hills were yet covered deeply in some places with 

 snow, and the whole scene was one of cold and dreary solitude, with not 

 a tree to intercept the view, nor ought of vegetation but the furze. 



Beyond the shelving tract of land which spread down from the ghat, 

 arose again a mighty snow-clad range of hills lifting its hoary head to 

 an elevation varying from fifteen to twenty thousand feet above the sea. 

 Here on the summit of the pass, which is 15,200 feet, an extensive bed 

 of decomposing shale gave a black and charred appearance to the soil, 

 while high on either hand rose mural cliffs of brimstone interstratified 

 with sandstones of different textures ; these were spliting by the action 

 of the frost, and falling in heavy masses down the ghat, where low down 

 they formed vast beds of broken fragments of every size. Crossing this 

 pass and descending along the shelving plain, we came, to my surprise, 

 suddenly upon a village situated in the hollow formed by the undula- 

 ting and blackened hillocks of shale which rose in all directions, look- 

 ing like heaps of coals and cinders. Beyond this, the Tartar lad point- 

 ed to some dark ravines, or water-courses, where he said the fossils 

 were to be found. Thither we of course repaired, but though we 

 searched long and closely throughout the day, a few broken and useless 

 specimens of the casts of Ammonites and Belemnites were all that we 

 collected, and after wandering among the snows and swamps and 

 muddy fields, at an elevation of 14,000 feet, from seven in the morning 

 until 5 p. m., I returned weary and disheartened to the pass, from 

 whence we again descended to our camp at Leedung. 



Though puzzled to account for my want of success, I had never- 

 theless seen enough of the formation on the heights to feel convinced 



