SPITI VALLEY, &c. 243 



the hollows of streams take their course, they appear like lofty islands 

 with their erect bases, planted in the sand, and their almost mural 

 sides ending in a flat top on a plane sloping outwards. Near the head of 

 the valley these tabular masses are sheeted in snow. In the descent of 

 the river the marginal rocks terminate in a sharper crest, and sink with 

 the level, but the snowy zone upon the north, though more remote, 

 preserves a very lofty line, displaying erect peaks with slanting 

 summits, like the crest of a wave that has gone by. The structure of the 

 rocks is generally a packed or scabrous limestone, the stratification of 

 which is arrayed in nearly horizontal belts, super-imposed upon each 

 other in layers like benches, having their vertical faces to the river, and 

 their dip inclined outwards at a very small angle with the horizon, which 

 gives their declivity a very regular slope, that sometimes breaks off 

 abruptly, but commonly softens into heaps of soil, like the undulations of 

 the sea, producing furze pasturage for cattle: but the faces towards the 

 river are too steep and rugged for any species of vegetable covering. Tlie 

 entire features of the country are extremely arid, with no natural verdure 

 or cultivation, except through the medium of irrigation. The valley is 

 but thinly inhabited, owing to the absence of streams for agriculture; 

 the villages are consequently far detached along the step of the river, 

 at a varying level between eleven and fourteen thousand feet ; yet 

 cultivation which, upon the Indian exposure of the mountains, shrinks 

 and ceases beyond nine thousand live hundred feet, here maintains 

 its ground and assumes even a denser character at belts of elevation, 

 which often correspond to the marginal limit of the snow upon the 

 southern aspect of the mountains, or the line of fifteen thousand feet. 

 These cultivable spots occur along the course of adjunct feeders of the 

 Sjnti, or in open hollows facing to the sun between ihc marginal rocks 

 of the dcU and the ]);uont riduc which dcliiies the levels on ( iilur 

 side. These villages, tliouL;h subjected to niuhl iVosts (luring more 

 than three parts of the year, and the keen rigors of a protrac ted winter. 



