1839.] Journal of a trip through Kunawur. 903 



The banks and bed of the river are thickly strewed with rolled 

 and water- worn fragments of every size, from the pebble to the mass 

 of many pounds in weight, and seemingly brought down from great 

 distances, as many of them evidently belong to formations which do 

 not occur in these lower parts. 



Boulders of quartz of gypsum, hornblende and mica slates, porphy- 

 ritic gneiss, sienite and sand stones, are heaped together in confusion 

 along the river's course, while here and there above the stream are 

 vast beds of the same rolled stones embedded in clay and debris. 

 These are situated solely at the lower part of the valley, commencing a 

 little above Rampore, and increasing in magnitude from thence down- 

 wards; they are chiefly, if not altogether, situated at those places 

 where the river takes a rapid turn, and have evidently been thrown 

 up or deposited in the back current or still waters of the deep floods, 

 which must have brought down the sediment and stones of which 

 they are composed. These vast deposits of alluvial matter are horizon- 

 tal, or rather preserve the line of level of the river, and upon their wide 

 and flattened surface the traveller is pleased to see a rich and smiling 

 cultivation. These beds are sometimes far from each other, at other 

 places they extend along both banks of the river, by the action of whose 

 current they have evidently been severed. Upon such are the villages 

 of Neert, Dutnuggur, Kaypoo, and many others on both banks built, 

 and surrounded by a beautiful and luxuriant vegetation. 



Rivers of the present day are known to accumulate and deposit 

 large beds of sand and other debris in the eddies or back waters 

 which they make when winding through rocks or strata of unequal 

 hardness, but these deposits of the Sutledge are not the gradual accu- 

 mulations of months and years, but from their massiveness and the 

 enormous blocks or boulders which they contain, must evidently owe 

 their origin to a larger body of water than is now supplied even in the 

 rainy season ; they must owe their origin to some vast and perhaps oft- 

 repeated floods from the upper parts of the district, such as the sudden 

 outpouring or bursting of some extensive lake, which has brought 

 down and deposited vast fragments of rocks, whose true site is situated 

 many miles from the deposits which now contain them, and which 

 tower up for two and even four hundred feet above the river's present 

 level. 



To state here the causes from which these beds have sprung would be 

 to anticipate, and we shall see as we travel onwards into Spiti, that 

 a solution is presented in the appearances which that valley exhibits. 

 Towards evening, the clouds began to gather thick and heavily, and 



