4S7 
1862.] 1Votes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. 
of whitewash put on and brushed off. Or, if left undisturbed, the 
small beetles and flesh eating larvae will very beautifully clean in this 
country heads thus dried with the flesh on them. The horns too of 
the sheath-horned ruminants (antelopes, sheep, &c.,) require to be 
touched with some preservative, especially where inserted in the 
skin, as they are otherwise liable to be eaten and disfigured by in¬ 
sects. 
July 7th, Mahasu .—Having completed my preparations, I left Sim¬ 
la on the 7th of July, and marched as far as Mahasu, the first bunga¬ 
low on the new road. As usual on first starting, I had some difficulty 
with the coolies, some of the loads proving too heavy, and I at that 
time having several double loads carried by two men, a plan produc¬ 
tive of much annoyance, and which I afterwards abandoned. The 
bungalow, like all those along the new road, was a very clean and 
comfortable one, and prettily situated in an open forest of the usual 
character of the pine and cedar forests around Simla. As far as 
Bowlee bungalow, the road is excellent, and the ascents and descents 
are mostly very gradual. Between Bowlee and Saraon (a few miles 
beyond which the road terminates abruptly) the road is generally 
good, but contains some very long and steep ascents ; the Nogri 
bungalow being situated on a feeder of the Sutlej at about the height 
of ftampore, and hardly, I should suppose, in a situation exempt from 
malaria during autumn. 
The views obtainable from many parts of this road are beautiful 
in the extreme, the Sutlej being often seen winding its way many 
thousand feet below the road, through a wild rocky glen, bounded on 
either side by precipitous mountains, clothed to their very summits 
with primeval forest. In other places, extensive patches of cultiva^ 
tion and thriving villages may be noticed, embosomed in fruit trees, 
among which the apricot, walnut and peach are most conspicuous, 
and whose waving crops of batu, of a deep crimson when ripe, offer a 
striking contrast to the paler and more subdued tints of other cereals. 
The hills round Simla, however, are in many directions singularly 
bare of trees, the station itself being rather centrally situated in a 
wooded tract of rather circumscribed dimensions. All travellers in 
the Himalayas are acquainted with the very capricious manner in 
which one face of a hill will be clothed with forest, whilst the rest 
is bare ; but much of the barenness of the hills round Simla is, I think, 
