1843.] Trip to the Bulcha and Oonta Dhoora Passes. 91 



immediately got sight of me and rushed off, so I only had one long 

 running shot, and missed. We then turned down into the bed of the 

 stream, and walked for some distance along the snow-beds covering it, 

 between high steep cliffs. No more burral, however, were visible, and it 

 became time to move on. Turned up East over some low hillocks, 

 most pleasantly covered with stunted palm trees* in flower. The low 

 close thorn also in flower, yellow-shaped, like sweet pea flowerf. Now 

 and then the iris of deep or pale blue color, a sort of wild garlic which 

 the Bhooteeas eat, in appearance just like iris or narcissus shoots; 

 " dooloo" I think rhubarb,^, and most delicious looking emerald 

 colored young grasses, fringing little rills of water flowing between the 

 hillocks. Hereabouts I saw a small dry water-course coming from 

 the top of a low isolated black hill (bare ;) in the bed of this were 

 numerous salagrams, which had evidently been washed from the soil 

 during rain. I picked up thirty or forty, and could have found hun- 

 dreds, but time admitted not. Very few of the specimens were per- 

 fect, as they get broken when rolled down by the stream ; but I 

 should think perfect specimens could be obtained by digging. Sala- 

 grams are formed by an incrustation of (probably lime) stone enclosing 

 the ammonite in a spherical shape, of all sizes, from a marble to a man's 

 head nearly. These cases as it were, burst either from some agency 

 within themselves, or on being set in motion by water falling, &c. and 

 display the fossils. Yet among the numbers that I broke, (they were 

 very hard,) I never found a decent specimen inside, and rarely even 

 the trace of one. In all of these I suppose the originally enclosed 

 shell must have been decomposed and absorbed by some peculiarity 

 in the chemical nature of the enclosing mass. After continuing East 

 for some distance over the same kind of ground, (said to be usually a 

 favorite resort of burral, though none were visible at the time,) I came 

 upon the road to Lufkhel ; and while descending to the river saw a 

 little East of the road, a small triangular sheet of deep blue water, 

 perhaps eighty yards long each side. North (in advance) across the 

 river about a mile off, another sheet of water was visible, less darkly 

 colored than this ; two or three rills of water flowed down along East 



* Probably a kind of willow is here meant. 



f Tartaric furze and juniper bushes are the thorny plants in the Passes. 



+ Yes.— J. H. JB. 



