942 Journal of atrip through Runaway. [Nov. 



years past it has been on the decline, and is now half in ruins and de- 

 serted by most of its former inhabitants. The reasons for this falling 

 off are entirely attributable to local circumstances. 



The soil is* a mixture of clay and sand, the latter predominating, 

 and is a deposit from the waters of the lake which once filled the 

 valley. The whole area formerly under cultivation might probably 

 have exceeded one and a half mile square, although at present it 

 scarcely equals one. Celestial, beardless, and common barley, wheat, 

 phuppra, beans, and peas, constitute the crops, and one harvest is all 

 that is obtained ; which is not to be wondered at, when we consider 

 that on the morning of the 12th of June, at sunrise, the thermometer 

 indicated a temperature of 35°. Snow was still lying on all the sur- 

 rounding heights, and fell throughout the day on the 10th and 11th of 

 June. In former days ere the cold soil was exhausted by the constant 

 growth of the same crops, Chungo was at the height of its prosperity, 

 and could even export grain to other parts, so abundant were its 

 harvests. But alas ! too soon " a change came o'er the vision of its 

 dream," and those days are gone, now never to return. 



The constant drain upon a soil naturally poor and cold, soon 

 changes its hitherto smiling and prosperous state to one of want and 

 poverty. The barrenness of the surrounding hills, yielding not even 

 a scanty pasturage to sheep and cattle, at once destroyed the chance of 

 recruiting the soil, by depriving the cultivator of the only source from 

 whence manure might have been procured ; and thus, from gathering 

 an abundant crop, the villager was first reduced to a bare suffici- 

 ency for the wants of himself and family, and finally obliged 

 to leave his fields untilled, and to seek employment and subsistence 

 in a happier clime. Many have thus emigrated into Spiti, Chinese 

 Tartary, and other places, and their once well cultivated fields 

 now exhibit a bare and hardened sand without one blade of grass, and 

 strewed with the fragments of rock which the weather has hurled 

 upon them from above. Could these people command annual sup- 

 plies of manure, as is the case in many parts of these hills, Chungo 

 would possess perhaps a finer cultivation than any village in Hung- 

 rung. In Kunawur it is a common practice to mix up leaves and the 

 young shoots of the pine trees with the dung of cattle, and this forms 

 a capital manure for their fields, which would otherwise, in many 

 parts, soon become nearly as impoverished as the soil of Chungo. ihey 

 have moreover in most parts of Kunawur a rotation of crops, by which 

 the soil is recruited, whereas at Chungo, one crop, and that the same 

 for years, is all that can be produced. This village has not a tree near 



