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



which I have also received from the Harung Pass above Sungla. It 

 forms a favourite food of the bears which are numerous hereabouts. 

 Mingled with and below the Rhododendron and mountain ash to 

 the right, are extensive shaggy woods of large white-barked birch 

 (Betula Bhojpatra.) recalling many a romantic spot in the Trosachs, Glen- 

 gariff, and Capel Carrig. The bark consists of as many as twenty layers, 

 and is much employed in Kunawur in the flat roofs of the houses, where 

 it is laid under a stratum of clay. Supposing the Himalaya to have 

 emerged gradually from the ocean, this " tree of knowledge" may be held 

 the last best gift of heaven to man in the vegetable way, for it could not 

 exist till the mountain had attained an elevation of 9,000 or 10,000 

 feet; the silver fir, (Picea webbiana) must be nearly of the same 

 age, and thus we may form a comparative chronology of the dates 

 at which the various trees were successively produced. Quitting the 

 birch braes, we encountered a steep ascent under fine gneiss crags 

 and pinnacles, with tremendous declivities on the right hand, which 

 brought us to the crest of the Ootulmai Ghatee, (called Gongrunch 

 or Shaling by Alex. Gerard,) where the path turns to the left, and 

 leaves the Shatool glen. Hence to Panwee is one almost uninter- 

 mitted and generally extremely steep descent for a few hundred feet, 

 over loose rugged rocks, covered with the large and now scarlet leaves 

 of Saxifraga ligulata, and then through a superb forest of Picea web- 

 biana and Quercus semicarpifolia, both streaming with long white 

 lichens, also birch, and a dense underwood of mountain ash, Rhododen- 

 dron campanulatum, Rosa webbiana, Syringa emodi (Lilac,) black and 

 red currants, yew, &c. At the bottom of this glen, perhaps a mile 

 down, we reached a small romantic dell, through which flows the 

 Skooling or Shaling stream, and here the scenery is of a Titanic gran- 

 deur and wildness. On all sides, feathered with the dark silver fir, vast 

 precipices spring up perpendicularly, and seem utterly to preclude 

 further progress ; it seems as if one had reached the gates of Hades. On 

 the brink of the stream the Greek Valerian (Polemonium cseruleum,) 

 and the lovely azure blue hound's tongue (Cynoglossum uncinatum,) 

 were flowering in abundance. God might have made a more beautiful 

 flower than this last, but he never did, as some one has justly observed 

 of the strawberry as a fruit. Exit from this spot seems as impracticable 

 as from the happy valley of Rasselas, and is only obtained by a short 



