158 On the Ballads and Legends of the Punjab. [No. 2. 



(36). And tissues bright from lands unknown, like golden foun- 

 tains flow. 



Golden tissues are matter of history with us, but still form indis- 

 pensable articles of luxury in India. They are often very beautiful, 

 being formed of a silken web and a golden woof. For this fabric 

 the silver thread wound around silk employed for ordinary gold 

 lace is not used : but the flattened wire of gold or of silver. 

 • (37). But aw'd and terrified at sight of good Kussaloo's bow 

 Back to the darkest gloom retrace his step with hideous roar, 

 Which rocks the mountain to its base, and thrills th' affrighted shore. 



It is a very remarkable circumstance that until within the last 

 fifteen or twenty years, the mountain of Gundgurh used at intervals 

 to utter, or seem to utter, a roar as of distant thunder. Numbers of 

 persons are living, who testify to have heard this sound even to the 

 distance of sixty miles from the mountain. They say that it was 

 distinguishable from thunder and from all other sound, and not 

 attended ordinarily with any tremor of the earth. Yet the moun- 

 tain which is a peak of blue mountain limestone jutting through 

 a long ridge of black clay-slate permeated with veins of white quartz 

 and sulphate of lime, shows no trace of volcanic agency. The empe- 

 ror Jehangeer mentions this bellowing of the mountain, which he 

 calls Grurj Gurh, or the house of thunder, and doubtless Gundgurh 

 or the naked house is a corruption of this. The sound is universally 

 ascribed to the imprisoned Eakuss, who utters it every time he 

 retreats from the sight of Eussaloo's bow. 



I account for this sound and its sudden cessation in the following 

 manner — Gundgurh is the last mountain of the long deep trough 

 of the Indus. Sounds uttered in narrow passes of that trough are 

 multiplied like the human voice in a speaking trumpet. The last 

 wave of sound is reflected from Gundgurh, the last mountain of the 

 chain. It seems to people of the plain to be the utterance of the 

 mountain itself. 



About 150 miles above Gundgurh, the Indus cleaves the snowy 

 Caucasus, being scarped on either hand by gigantic cliffs — large 

 masses of these cliff's plunging into the deep stream created a wave 

 of sound which was borne onward by the conducting agency of the 

 mountains on either hand, and eventually came to the plains reflect- 



