Mr, Fraser on the Himalay Mountains . 63 
soft destructible quality, of indurated clay, and sometimes of beds of 
rounded pebbles and gravel ; the face which is exposed to the south- 
west is the most abrupt and rough ; that towards the north-east is 
more sloping and more covered with wood ; seen from a height 
above them to the north-east, these low hills resemble a wave of 
the sea that has rolled by, and in some places shews its broken crest 
half turned back. 
The next range of hills in this part of the country is more 
lofty, running from 1500 to 4 and 5000 feet in height. It is 
very sharp, rough, and ridgy, cut into deep shaggy dells, and the 
crests of the ridges are often so sharp that two persons can hardly 
stand abreast upon them. The rock is of a hard but very quickly 
destructible substance ; it seems to consist of strongly indurated clay, 
with a great admixture of siliceous matter; its colour a greyish 
brown ; its fracture is generally in straight lines, but preserving no 
regularity of form, and it soon moulders into dust, of which with 
vegetable mould the soil chiefly consists. 
Just beyond this range rises a mountain entirely of limestone ; 
at the particular point where it fell under our notice, the division 
was very distinctly marked by the bed of a river, beyond which 
limestone usurped the place of all other rock. And though I dare 
not say that this vein runs universally along the range, yet we traced 
it subsequently far to the eastward, much beyond the termination of 
the great mountain, having crossed one or two perennial streams, 
.and rather stretching away across the hills in an easterly direction. 
The chief range of limestone we saw was about 7000 feet high, 
and exhibited an external appearance quite as different from the 
range on either side as were its materials from theirs. 
A large perennial stream marked the division between this range 
of liipestone and the commencement of schistus. Hitherto the ranges 
