1846.] and Boorun Passes over the Himalaya. 91 



cealed by rising land, but so far as one can see, the great range here is 

 deficient in the magnificent cliffs and crags of the Roopin and other 

 Passes to the eastward, but one is not yet high enough to judge fairly. 

 Moojwar is about 9,000 feet above the sea; the houses large, of two 

 stories, very substantially constructed of stone and timber. The culti- 

 vation is chiefly Bathoo (Amaranthus anerdana,) and Phaphur or Buck- 

 wheat, with a little tobacco. The climate is severe and capricious, 

 and the people seem to consider the passage of the Shatool by no means 

 a trifle, and, as we afterwards found, endeavoured to intimidate our 

 people by the threat that not one of them would ever return ; nor was 

 a storm of rain and thunder in the afternoon, much calculated to en- 

 courage them. The villagers have, however, agreed to accompany us, 

 and promised to have supplies for three days all ready in the morning. 

 They are said to have been recently implicated in a foray on their 

 neighbours beyond the next ridge whose sheep to the number of 1,500 

 they carried off after the manner of Rob Roy and his Caterans. There 

 is no king in the land, and every man does that which is right in his own 

 eyes. 



September llth. — To Kala Koondar, ten or eleven miles, which took 

 us eight hours, being much delayed by the constant halts of the coolies, 

 by my own rests and search for plants, and, after quitting the forest, 

 by a very difficult path. The distances indeed are but approximations, 

 and are perhaps exaggerated ; experience has shown that to the direct 

 map- distance about one- third must be added for the road- distance, 

 instead of one-seventh as in the plains ; but Kala Koondar, and the 

 next two stages, being " vox et prseterea nihil" are not inserted on the 

 maps. Soon after leaving Moojwar, we passed the hamlet Jutwar, 

 the last and highest (9,200 feet,) on the route. Brush- wood and meadows 

 succeed, the first formed by Rosa sericea (a 4-petalled white species,) 

 Berberis brachybotrys (with bright red fruit,) and abundance of the 

 beautiful yellow Potentilla dubia ; while the pastures abound with the 

 sessile flowered Iris kemaonensis ; all these plants are equally charac- 

 teristic of the corresponding sites above Junglig and Jaka near the 

 Boorun and Roopin Passes. The late Dr. Hoffmeister shewed me 

 specimens of the above Potentilla, if they were not varieties of P. atro- 

 sanguinea, gathered at and above Chitkool on the Buspa, in which 

 some of the petals were yellow and some carmine. On quitting the 



