1846.] and Boorun Passes over the Himalaya. 131 



having neither doors nor window- frames, offers but a cold welcome, 

 with a roof, too, resembling the sieve of the Danaides : they manage 

 these things better in the plains and in Kemaon ; but a decree has 

 I believe gone forth for the erection of a new bungalow in a more con- 

 venient site than the present, which is more suited to the herald Mer- 

 cury than to the mortal, weary, and thirsty traveller. It was the full 

 intention of the late Major Broadfoot, C. B., to open the Pugdundee 

 route, so greatly superior in scenery and shade to the made road, 

 which, besides being nearly two miles longer, dips deeply into the hot 

 glen below Muteeana, and is uninteresting till within a few miles 

 of Nagkunda. It will always, nevertheless, be necessary as the winter 

 medium of communication with Kotgurh, when the northern exposure 

 of the mountain is buried in snow. In this warm glen, and in that of 

 the Girree, grows the shirsha, a species of Acacia, perhaps A. smithiana, 

 with flowers in May of the size of A. speciosa or Lebekh, the Siris of 

 the plains, except that its long tassels of stamens are rose-coloured, and 

 that it has not the delightful lemon fragrance of the latter. The 

 shirsha greatly resembles A. julibrissiu (i. e. gul-i-reshm or silk-flower), 

 a Persian species, which is naturalized about Como. In the same glen 

 will be found the pretty little Parochetus oxalidifolia or communis, the 

 Cedrela serrata, Populus ciliata ; and in the cornfields on the way side, 

 the Nepal wall-flower (Erysimum robustum), Silene inflata, Carduus 

 nutans (the fine purple thistle), &c. 



October 2nd. — To Fagoo, fifteen miles in five hours : the road rises 

 to the Punta Ghatee, 8,500 feet, 100 feet above which to the right, 

 stands a ruined post of the Ghoorkalees, who near this inflicted a 

 decisive defeat on the mountaineers. Hence it descends and makes a 

 great circuit to, and up the Kunag Ghatee, 8,400 feet, with the Teeba, 

 300 feet higher to the right ; it then passes a little under Theog, and 

 reaches Fagoo by a long but gentle ascent. Except some koil and 

 oak woods below Theog, and the forest of Mohroo oak on the Kunag 

 mountain, there is but little wood in this stage ; the Mohroo oak (Quercus 

 dilatata) considerably resembles the beautiful evergreen oak of Nynee 

 Tal, and the Binsur and Gagur ranges in Kemaon, where it is known 

 as the Tilonj, Kilonj, or Timsha : it is the Quercus kamroopii of Don's 

 prodromus : this botanist was afterwards inclined to identify the two 

 trees, but they differ considerably in several particulars. A few specimens 



