90 Diary of an Excursion to the Shatool [No. 170. 



cine, of which, by the way, every traveller should carry a small supply 

 to meet the demands, which will be almost daily made by patients suf- 

 fering from liver, spleen, dysentery, and in short all the ills that flesh is 

 heir to, save blue cholera ; and if unflinching faith in the skill of the phy- 

 sician be conducive to a cure, the practitioner here should be successful 

 indeed, for not JEsculapius himself was invested by the Greeks with 

 more certain healing powers than is every European — however modest 

 his pretensions in this department — by the mountaineers. From Dugol, 

 the path again descends to the river, and for two or three miles keeps 

 near its bank through beautiful English-like woods of elm, poplar, 

 alder, cornel, (Cornus macrophylla) and birch (Betula cylindrostachya,) 

 with Abies smithiana on the heights. A little beyond Dugol, I found 

 by a stream a species of Eupatorium in flower, much resembling E. 

 cannabinum. We next recrossed to the left bank and followed it for 

 several miles by a path often bad and rocky, and impracticable to 

 ponies ; the scenery is very wild and beautiful, the Undretee forming 

 here, and indeed throughout the march, a series of foaming rapids : it is 

 quite unfordable. We now once more recrossed to the right bank, and 

 in a mile or two reached the junction of the two streams which form 

 the Undretee — viz., the Byansoo from the left, the Sheear from the right, 

 both flowing down from bare russet-coloured ridges, far above the re- 

 gion of forest, and evidently buried in snow for three-fourths of the 

 year. The Byansoo, I believe, originates in the Jalsoo Pass, about 

 13,000 feet high, which affords a passage to Seran on the Sutluj. We 

 finally gained the left bank of the Byansoo by a fallen spruce, and as- 

 cended the fork between the streams by a long and steep ascent to 

 Cheechwar, one of the Rol group of villages, 8,600 feet above the sea, 

 a pretty large and well-built place, one and a half or two miles above 

 which, by an easy acclivity, we reached Moojwar. A blue aster, quite 

 similar to the Swiss A. alpina ; a large and handsome Inula by rivulets, 

 (I. royleana ?) the Parochetus oxalidifolia, the large-leaved elm (Ulmus 

 erosa ?) much like the Wych elm, here called Mored and Paboona, afford- 

 ing much fodder to the cattle, with the walnut, peach, and oak, (Q. 

 semicarpifolia), are common in this district. Across the Sheear to the 

 east, the mountains present a lofty precipitous front to the west, clothed 

 with spruce and cedar. Across the Byansoo to the west are more bare, 

 brown, and very rugged mountains. On the north, the Shatool is con- 



