1861.] The progress of the Kashmir Series. 103 
Provisions had at all stations to he brought from places 4 to 7 
marches distant. The people of the country were moreover not 
very willing to enter the plains from the Kashmir side. The opera- 
tions could only be carried on during the rainy season, and at that 
time there are but few breaks in the clouds which rush through this 
depression of the Himalayas into the valley of the Indus and across 
to the Karakoram mountains. With the greatest difficulty the 
signal men who worked the heliotropes and lamps at the various 
stations were fed, and on two occasions the main party were starved 
out and had to retreat in consequence of protracted cloudy weather. 
Stations over 16,000 feet above the sea are not the most agreeable 
places for residence at the best of times, but when enveloped in 
clouds they are unmistakably unpleasant, though there is some slight 
compensation in the grandeur- of a break up, or when the upper level 
of the clouds falls, as I have several times seen it fall, below the 
station on which I was pitched, leaving the campi on an island sur- 
rounded with a level sea of clouds from which the peaks of the 
various ranges stood out like other islands and the waves of cloud 
surged backwards and forwards across the lower ridges between. In 
clear weather the views were really magnificent and proportionately 
appreciated after the cloudy weather. The atmosphere was at such 
times wonderfully clear at those elevations. 
It was across the plains of Deosai from Haramook that I took the 
first observation to the peak K (2) (28,287 feet above the sea) at a 
distance of 136 miles, the side of one of our largest triangles. 
Notwithstanding all the difficulties the triangulation was success- 
fully carried over the plains of Deosai during one season without 
relaxing any of the rigorous rules of the Great Trigonometrical Survey 
of India. 
With reference to my last memorandum on the great flood of the 
river Indus, I have not as yet been able to obtain any further in- 
formation as to its origin, though the expedition against Gilgit has 
succeeded as I anticipated it would. 
The Maharajah has directed every enquiry to be made, and I 
hope to be able to give a correct account of the origin of the flood 
when I return to Maharajah’s territories next year. Meantime the 
expedition has confirmed several important points in the geography 
