1844.] Notes on Moorcroffs Travels in Ladakh, fyc. 173 



hills, or leaping from high impending cliffs, they are dissipated in 

 spray. So vast indeed are these mountains, and to such heights do they 

 at once attain, that gloomy forests of the tallest pines appear but as 

 grass, and give a colour, rather than a feature, to the precipitous sides. 

 Among the northernmost Himalayas, scenes of such naked grandeur 

 are frequent, but I do not remember any pleasing from their variety, 

 or such as we would term picturesque from their contrasts ; and the 

 admirer of nature adorned, should not perhaps go beyond Nachar, and 

 certainly not beyond Chini, where he may revel amid scenes of sur- 

 passing luxuriance and beauty. 



Cidturable Spots. — It used to be an opinion, that the world was at 

 first made as we now find it, and that the channels of rivers were at 

 once created of the depth and breadth we now see them ; but geologi- 

 cal research has proved, that nature is usually slow in her operations ; 

 that the Himalayas may have been raised from the bottom of an ocean ; 

 and that the Sutlej certainly was, at a time subsequent to the last 

 great movements, a series of lakes of various sizes. Time has enabled the 

 river to wear away all its impediments, sometimes four hundred feet 

 perpendicular through rock, and it now forms one stream of rapid but 

 equable descent throughout its mountain course. The existence of the 

 lakes in the Sutlej and its tributaries is still attested by horizontal 

 deposits of alluvium at various heights above their present channels, 

 and the beds of these pools still form almost the only cultivated land 

 in Upper Kunawar, for they yield a good soil, and admit of a stream of 

 water from one torrent or another being brought to bear on their in- 

 clined and non-terraced surfaces. In Middle and Lower Kunawar, 

 moderate rain and decaying vegetation give more aid to the husband- 

 man, and hanging gardens, vineyards, and fields of many colours add 

 variety and richness to the landscape. 



Climate, Seasons, fyc. — When the Sutlej turns to cross the Hima- 

 layas its channel is about eight thousand five hundred feet above the 

 sea, and in its direct course of seventy miles to the limits of Kunawar, 

 it descends to half that elevation. The villages are usually much 

 higher than this base line, and fields of grain are produced almost two 

 miles and a half above the level of the sea. In Middle Kunawar, the 

 cultivated spots have an average altitude of about seven thousand 

 feet, and it is here in a genial climate, and remote from the heavy rains 



