61 
Mr. Fraser on the Him at ay Mountains . 
h ills, particularly the loftiest peaks which are too precipitous to retain 
the snow that falls on them, are distinctly stratified, the stone itself 
seemed lamellar and very sharp, and the strata, according to our best 
judgment, dipped to the north-east at an angle of about 45 degrees or 
something less. In those faces of precipitous rock that were turned 
towards us, the stratification was remarkably distinct, even in the 
sharpest spires. Our distance from these peaks in a straight line 
could not be greater than 2 to c 2\ miles, and we had good glasses 
which gave us a very accurate view of their structure, but we had 
no means of discovering the nature of the rock of which they were 
composed. From several thousand feet below their tops, all sort of 
vegetation ceases, not a blade of any thing green can be detected, 
no living thing can be seen, no soil covers the hard bare and scarred 
cliffs that spire aloft, battered and shivered by the shock of weather 
and vicissitudes of seasons ; all that is not thus solid rock appears to 
consist of the moulderings and ruin of these peaks collected in the 
hollows at their feet. 
Such were the snowy hills at Seran, a point within them to 
which we penetrated, and elevated three miles above the banks of the 
river Sutlej. On our route, returning to the south-eastward, we 
held our way for a considerable distance along the bed of a large 
stream called the river Pabur, which rises far in the north-east 
among the depths of the Himalay. We found along its banks a 
quantity of large blocks of a very hard stone, composed of mica, 
quartz, and a hard grey matter with darker spots, forming a sort of 
varied grey with a strange striated irregular texture ; this was evi- 
dently brought here by the violence of the stream, though some of 
the blocks were of great size : the neighbouring rocks were chiefly 
schist, some of a good compact quality and tolerably blue, and of 
I 2 
