292 Literary Intelligence, fyc. [No. 3, 
o’clock. The rest of the afternoon I spent in shooting myself a dinner 
of one quail, and two plover for my guide, an Armenian sent by the 
Prince. The ground gravelly, formed of debris from the mountain 
supporting a shrubbery of Acacias, Zizyphus, Euphorbias, Cutch trees, 
&c. &c., and a pretty good herbage ; besides the gravelly debris, 
there being a good alluvial of rich red soil. 
The evening spent in getting information from my host the head¬ 
man of the village and district. 
The morrow we started due east to the instep of the hills, and soon 
came upon a kind of schist, ringing at the hammer, dipping as far as 
I could see about sixty-five to the east and with its strife shown by 
the weather-worn surface and by fracture running north and south, 
huge masses were scattered over the surfaces, but much was evidently 
in situ. Among it I came upon a mass of conglomerate, which seem¬ 
ed to curve up from between the schist, and which consisted of pebbles 
of quartz and large lumps, some a foot in diameter, others an inch or 
\ 
less, of the magnetic oxide of iron, cemented together by siliceous (?) 
matter into a hard mass. This I had plied with some crowbars, it 
seemed to go deep and extended along to the foot of another little 
hill. Going on, I found lots of the oxide imbedded in the soil lying- 
on it, and sometimes firmly bound by the schistose rock. I ascended 
a small hill, formed as of huge masses of the schist, piled one on 
other, and after asking some more questions, determined, much to the 
discomfiture of the military guard, to go on forthwith to Seebeing, a 
village the other side of the immense mountain before us, and which 
journey I had intended to make the next day. Mounting my pony, 
followed by the village headman also mounted, I set out, then at 
about 9 o’clock. Our path lay first north-east and east, winding 
up between the hills, till we had evidently pierced the range, then, 
turning south, we had the high ridge on our right and west, another 
high ridge on our left. Our path lying along a valley stretching be¬ 
tween the two ridges. The summits were serrated, clothed and 
fringed with trees, except where evident landslips had left great bare 
perpendicular patches of red earthy-looking rock. The stones, and 
bared rock of the same schistose character, apparently a schistose 
limestone. Generally black by exposure and of most irregular weather¬ 
ing, sometimes, however, the rock, though evidently of the same 
nature, was whiter internally and weathered a clean cream colour with 
a smooth surface. 
