2^0 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 



fluctuation that Moorcroft observed, and! myself have found to prevail. 

 The hot winds are even there far less parching than the air of the interior 

 Himdlaya in autumn, — wood, books and shoes warping under it. At 

 Shipke, upon the verge of the table land, this dryness was quite withering, 

 and every thing flexible was converted into a coriacious hardness, and we 

 felt a sensation of intense cold when the thermometer pointed between 

 40° and 50°, and, under the influence of a strong wind, the effect of a 

 temperature but a few degrees lower was quite benumbing. In the British 

 territory of Ktmdiuer, laying beyond the Himdlaya, all the fruits are dried 

 upon the tops of the houses at the season of the periodical rains in India. 

 Even turnips are preserved in this way. To this state of the climate 

 is owing the superiority and preservation of all the northern fruits of 

 Kashmir, Kabul, and Kandahar. A circumstance still more surprising 

 in this atmospheric vicissitude upon the immediate verge of an Indian sky, 

 came under my own observation. The fresh roots of the Rheum palmatum 

 which I dug up from amongst patches of snow at the solstice in the 

 Himalaya ridge, were so brittle in August as to be easily reduced to 

 powder, and moist opium received in Kundwer in the middle of July, was 

 pulverised to an impalpable fineness in the subsequent month, — thus at 

 the most humid period of the year was effected a process that in India is 



with the return of spring the gelid expanse breaks up with a noise like thunder, and thaws away, 

 and torrents from the surrounding high land contribute their accessions and rise the surface to its 

 maximum limit. Evaporation now exerts the combined influence of an ardent sunshine and a dry- 

 attenuated atmosphere, and by the end of August the lake has sunk to its greatest depression. 

 Mdnmrovara is precisely similar, but upon a much larger scale in respect to the volume of its waters, 

 its elevation and magnitude of the scenes around it. The water is well tasted, which would seem to 

 argue some outlet, which the oral accounts of the Ldmds would confirm to be that of the Satlej ; — as 

 to the egress of any other river in such a situation, — it is a supposition bordering so closely upon a 

 physical impossibility that it need not be entertained. The waters of Lake Chamoreril (as might be 

 expected from their having no drain) are unfit to drink, though barely differing in taste from that of 

 running streams. Another lake, two days journey west of Chamoreril, at an elevation of fifteen thou- 

 sand five hundred feet, was found very bitter and brackish, and I was surprised to see wells 

 of the finest water, in the very midst of the salt marshes : innumerable wild fowl covered the entire 

 surface. 



