338 Narrative of a Journey to C/io Lagan, fyc. [Sept. 



about them, except an expression of alarm and stupidity in their faces, 

 and they are perhaps rather darker and otherwise more like lowland 

 Hindustanis than the average of Kumaon Paharis. I imagine they 

 were dressed for the occasion : one of them brought me a Nazar, a 

 miserable fowl, in a wooden bowl of their own manufacture. They are 

 civilized enough to make these wooden bowls for sale or barter in the 

 villages of Askot, whence they supply their few wants. They live un- 

 der temporary Chappers, frequently moving from place to place amidst 

 the jungles of Chipula ; their principal subsistence being certain edi- 

 ble roots of wild plants and what game they can catch, and they occa- 

 sionally get presents of cooked food from the villagers. They have a 

 dialect of their own, but some of them can communicate with their ci- 

 vilized neighbours of the villages in Pahari Hindi : all that my visitors 

 would say in my presence was in answer to a question on that head, — 

 that there were five or six ' maw' (families) of them. The Askot 

 people could tell me nothing at all about the history of these Bdn-mdnus : 

 but I imagine they are the people whom Traill calls Rawats or Rajis, a 

 small remnant of the aborigines of the Hill country, or of an ancient 

 tribe driven into the jungles by subsequent invaders from the lowlands, 



It is a pity that some effort is not made to reclaim them from their 

 bestial mode of life ; they are a quiet, inoffensive set of people, and 

 might probably be found tractable to civilization. 



The river (Gori) here has subsided very much since we crossed it, 

 10th September, by a Jhula of cables. A large rock now dry in the 

 middle of the stream affords a pier for two Sangas, which the Asko- 

 tites have built in such a cutcha fashion, that a few days since some 

 of them were thrown off (by the swaying of the loose timbers), and 

 had a narrow escape of drowning. One of the iron suspension bridges 

 would be a great convenience here, this ghat being the only direct com- 

 munication with lower Kumaon for the districts of Dharchula and 

 Kela, (Khasia;) Chandans, Darma, and Byans, (Bhotia.) 



Thermometer at sunset 63° ; boiled at 208^°; elevation of Garjia 

 Ghat, by Webb, 2,094 feet; Barometrically b. t. 1918 feet. The con- 

 fluence of the Gori with the Kali, If miles below this, is 2059 feet 

 above the sea level (by Webb's book). Jhula ghat on the Kali, a run- 

 ning distance of 14 miles below the confluence, is 18/5 feet, so that the 

 fall between the two is 184 feet, being at the rate of 13 feet per mile. 



