488 
Notei of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. [No. 5, 
unquestionably produced by clearing ; and one of the most disagree¬ 
able sounds to me, occasionally to be beard in Simla itself, is that of 
the woodman’s axe slowly but steadily clearing a way through those 
umbrageous forests, at present the ornament and glory of the station. 
Closely connected with this subject is that of the supply of water, 
which of late years has been found to fail and prove inadequate to the 
wants of the inhabitants; this may in part arise from the growth of 
the place, but the actual supply of water furnished by the springs 
has, on undoubted testimony, alarmingly diminished of late years. 
The authorities have driven a tunnel into the hill side not far from 
the Church, with the view of tapping fresh sources of supply, but 
taking the nature of the ground into consideration, I have no great 
hopes of the success of the plan. A far more certain and practicable 
method, it seems to me, would be to construct a series of dams across 
the narrow nullah intersecting the station, giving rise thereby to a 
number of small pools one above the other, whose aggregate capacity 
would be very considerable, some of which might be reserved for 
drinking, and the others for washing and general purposes. As the 
nullah has a rocky bed, no difficulty would be experienced in con¬ 
structing masonry dams of the requisite strength and proportions. A 
few miles from Simla the road passes through a tunnel of some hun¬ 
dred yards in length, excavated in massive schists, but very wet and 
slushy under foot from incessant drippings from the roof, to drain off 
which no provision appears to have been made. 
8th, Fagu, 8718 ft. # —This bungalow is situated on the old road, but 
is much frequented being an easy march from Simla, and though 
small, prettily situated. The road between Maliasu and Fagu is well 
wooded and very picturesque, the road in many places affording a 
* All heights marked thu9 * are from observations made with two carefully 
compai*ed boiling-point thermometers by my colleague Mr. Mallet, and the few 
taken by myself are made with an ordinary thermometer corrected by compari¬ 
son with the above instruments. The tables used in calculation are Boiieau’s 
tables published at Meerut in 1849. It is important to state this, as the tables 
of Col. Sykes supplied with the boiling-point thermometers, (Casella’s Thermo- 
hypsometer) give a much too low result, amounting at the Parang Pass to a 
difference—991—compared with result of a calculation on the same observation 
by Boiieau’s formula, which, as far as my scanty means of verification go, appears 
to give the more correct result. The following are the heights determined by 
my colleague Mr. Mallet in a part of the valley unvisited by me. 
Shalkar, 10089. Changrizang, 12420. Huling, 10598. 
Sumra, 10624. Lari, 10845. Thabo, 10804. " Po, 11424. 
The heights are those ef the camping ground of the respective villages. 
