1846.] and Boorun Passes over the Himalaya. 85 



of a small bungalow, the last on the route to the snowy range. Here 

 commences the rice cultivation so general in the valley of the Pabur. 

 Bathoo (Amaranthus anardana), kodah, cheena, and tobacco, are also 

 cultivated. The country is fertile and populous ; the neighbouring 

 mountains, especially to the south, where a long and lofty spur from 

 Koopur extends to the Pabur — are beautifully diversified with fields, 

 thriving villages, and pine forests, chiefly of Kail, the only species at 

 Deorah. 



September 8th. — To Rooroo Kothee in four and three-quarter hours, 

 called fourteen miles in the route book, but perhaps not above twelve. 

 Soon after leaving Deorah, the road enters the domain of the Ranee of 

 Syree, leading down over gneiss rock, along the left bank of the Beeskool 

 river, which rises from the Koopur mountain. Its banks are regularly 

 fringed with elder trees (Alnus obtusifolia) here called Koonch, the New 

 of Kunawur. Saree is about half-way to Rooroo, and is the lair of an 

 old Ranee, once famed for her beauty, and now for litigation with her 

 neighbours, and oppression of her people. The old lady visited Cal- 

 cutta about 1822, where I saw her on a visit to the late Sir Robert 

 Stevenson. From near Saree, which is a poor hamlet, the Pabur river is 

 first seen, with the Beeskool flowing into it, through some flat alluvial 

 ground by Goonsa village. Across the Pabur, on a nearly isolated hill 

 perhaps 500 feet above it, stands the fort or castellated mansion of 

 Raeengudh or Raeengurh, once a Ghoorka, then a British post, and 

 since ceded to the Rana of Kyoonthul in exchange for Simla. Far 

 above the fort, from amidst a group of minor mountains of very pic- 

 turesque outline, spring the richly wooded peaks of Boorhun and 

 Godar Deotah, to the height of nearly 9,000 feet above sea level, 

 a branch of the Changsheel — or as it is here softened, Chaheel range. 

 The road descends by easy gradations to the level of the Pabur, and 

 crossing the Nye, Noye, Pursrar or Dogra, a tributary from Thana 

 Keeshain, continues along or near its right bank to Rooroo, a few hun- 

 dred yards short of which, it crosses by a Sanga, or wooden bridge, a 

 rocky narrow chasm, ninety-nine feet deep, through which flows the 

 Shikree Nuddee. The Pabur is here a fine, strong, and perfectly clear river, 

 occasionally forming formidable rapids. A species of trout is abundant 

 in it and in the Shikree, but is said to be prevented by the snow water 

 from ascending more than ten or twelve miles higher up. The cliff 



