the severity of the climate. The same is the case with the hare, the cow, and the dog, and indeed with every known animal in the district, so provident has nature been in clothing them, and the sheep have very long and shaggy coats. It is astonishing to think that such an elevated region, far exceeding the plains of Quito, Los Pastos, and even the table land of Titicaca, should be capable of feeding such immense droves of cattle, tame and wild, solitary and gregarious. The number of sheep, goats, and yaks, grazing in the vicinity of Gortope, could not, in Mr Moorcroft's opinion, be below 40,000. The pasturage is abundant and of the very best kind, but how these animals are supported during a winter of nine months, when all the grounds must necessarily be covered with snow, is difficult, if not impossible to divine; the subject requires elucidation. This region abounds also in minerals, especially gold; all the torrents abound with it, and there are many gold scours. The hills-stated to be rich in gold-are granite of mixed colours, according to Mr Moorcroft, the red predominating, with horizontal strata of quartz, and small fibrous veins of a white material like agate, descending perpendicularly. The gold is here separated by washing, as there is little or no fuel in the vicinity, or rather no wood. Several gold pits were met with on the road from the Sutluj to Gara, and two gold mines were working, with tunnels under the surface, and the materials are carried to the river and there washed. Cinnabar of antimony seems also to abound. Borax is found in the lake of Tchallatchaka, nigh Roodauck, and in great quantities in the places neighbouring Gara, Mapang, and Ladauk. Such a lofty, cold, and wintry region cannot contain much population, the chief part of which seems to be employed in tending sheep, goats, and yaks. Villages are scanty, the habitations being chiefly tents, a collection of which makes a pastoral camp. The only villages of importance in this superalpine region are Tuhzagong and Routho, or Roodauck. The former is merely a frontier Chinese post on the banks of the Indus, here called Eckung Khampa, or eastern branch,' which rises in the lateral range connecting the Caillas and the Mooz Taugh, and is joined, as reported, a little below this place by the southern branch or river of Gara called the Sing-choo, which rises 20 B. miles S. of Gara, in the S.E. angle of the valley, formed by the junction of the eastern range, which bounds the valley, with the Caillas. Tuhzagong is a fortified village built of mud and stones, where two Chinese officers reside, who regulate all public affairs, and watch over the public concerns. It contains about 30 houses within the walls. A place called Guinak by Moorcroft, and said to be 20 days N.E. of Gara, and the capital of Tartary, is the quarter whence the Bhoteas receive all their woollen cloths. Such a place is not found in any of our maps. It seems not to be the name of a place, but of a region, and is a Tibetian appellative. The Tibetians give the appellation of Ghia, the great, or the very dispersed, to many nations. Singly employed, it is ordinarily applied to the Chinese, and chiefly to those in the Lesser Bukharia and Soongaria, who are denominated by the Tibetian compound appellative, Ghia Nagh, black Chinese, a term exactly corresponding to the Kara Kitat of the Mongols, and the modern Kara Kathay. Guinak, therefore, is Little Bukharia or Chinese Toorkistaun; and probably the city of Khotaun is the place intended, as it really lies to the N.E. of Gara, is a place of importance, and the capital of a district.

6

CHAP. II.-UPPER BASIN OF THE SUTLUJ.

THIS S.E. division comprehends the Speetee of Ladauk, Khoonawoor, and the Oondes.

Speetee of Ladauk.] This district has Chayanthang on the E.; Ladauk on the N.; Koolloo on the S.W.; and Bischur, or rather Khoonawoor, on the S. and S.E.; and pays tribute to Ladauk, Koolloo, and Bischur. It is composed of three subdivisions watered by the Speetee, the Paratee, and the Pinoo. The natives are all Tartars, and worshippers of Boodh. The villages are from 12,000 to 12,500 feet above the level of the sea, but towards Ladauk they are still more elevated; the country is also very barren and the climate inhospitable. It is every where environed by lofty snow-clad mountains, and is itself intersected with various ranges, the sources of innumerable torrents, descending to the three principal rivers, or to the Sutluj itself, through Khoonawoor and Koolloo. The range on the side of Ladauk, which divides its waters from those of the Indus, is very lofty, and must be crossed in order to enter Ladauk. The natives-who are of the same stock as their neighbours of Ladauk—are represented as a rapacious race, having all the vices but none of the virtues of real savages. They are cowardly and assuming; their youth is without honour, and their age without respect. They are ragged and greasy, and nature has not favoured their outward form. Their chief villages are Lar, 11 miles N.W. of Shealkhoor, and 11,071 feet above the sea; Manes, on the same stream, 11,900 feet above the level of the sea; Dunken, a fort of 40 houses, built of stone and mud, and situated amidst rugged projections of gravel, 1,500 feet above the Speetee and 13,000 above the sea; and Tengdi, 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, on the S.W. branch of the Speetee.13

District of Khoonawoor.] This picturesque and rugged region lies immediately behind the southernmost range of the great Himalaya, and occupies the lower part of the course of the Speetee river, and the TransHimalayan valley of the Sutluj, as far up as Shipke. It has the Speetee of Ladauk on the N.W., from which it is divided by a range of great elevation, by the upper part of the territory of Ladauk on the N. and N.E., by the Oondes on the S.E., and on the S. and S.W. by the Hindoo states of Bischur and Koolloo; but its western limit we cannot exactly specify, and as little can we assign its extreme points of longitude and latitude. According to captain Herbert, it extends from 31° 33′ N. lat. to 31° 51 N. lat.; and from 71° 47′ E. long. to 78° 42′ E. long., exclusive of the Purgunnah of Hangarang, on the lower course of the Speetee. This region be said to lie within clusters of mountains sheeted with perpetual snow, there being no table-land or undulated plain in any part of it. The inhabited portions, are confined to the valleys of rivers, or gorges of torrents, and the villages are scattered along their banks at a general elevation of

may

13 It was the intention of the two brothers Gerards to have proceeded up this branch to Ladauk by the pass of Tari, which is the most direct road. But entreaties, and an offered douceur of 150 rupees, were unavailing; the Lafa, or chief of Tengdi, would not hear of their proceeding onwards, or attempting the Tari pass. After a fruitless negotiation of two days, our travellers were compelled to return to Manes, and recross the Darbung pass to Soongnaum in Khoonawoor. Tartar guards are every where posted, by the careful jealousy of the Celestial court, to prevent all access into Chinese Tartary on the side of Khoonawoor; and mandarins have been despatched by the court of Pekin, since the suppression of the late revolt in Chinese Toorkistaun, to the country of Ladauk to warn the people against the admission of strangers into that region.

9000 feet, but in the interior they rise to 12,000 feet, and even more. The seasons vary with the height of the level; in the lower regions of the valleys the climate in summer is warm. The finest grapes occur near the margin of the Sutluj, and in the dells of streams flowing from the snow, where the solar reverberation is great. In this region also the finest honey is gathered. At the height of 9000 feet and more the climate is delicious; our European fruits come to perfection, and the forest-trees and all the wild flowers of our country are spread over the soil. In the valleys on both sides of the Sutluj, in Lower Khoonawoor, not less than 18 kinds of grapes, distinguished by several names, derived from colour, shape, size, and flavour, are raised to the greatest perfection, at an elevation of more than 7000 feet, even up to nigh 10,000 feet. Some are dried on the tops of houses, some made into spirits, the rest eaten ripe. All this fertility and variety of produce is the effect of concentrated warmth, produced by the reverberation of the solar rays from both sides of the glens; the climate being quite different in this respect from what takes place in the exterior chain of the Great Himalaya, where the heat is reflected to it but from one side, and therefore is much less than in the interior clusters and ranges, where there is a strong reverberation from all quarters. According to Gerard, the frontier range on the side of Ladauk and Chinese Tartary is granitic. Limestone, however, prevails to an elevation of 20,000 feet, and sandstone is found at an elevation of 16,700 feet. Horizontal strata of sandstone, marle, and loam, in the most regular layers and at prodigious heights, are found the granite resting on clay, and the sandstone above granite, in the valley of the Speetee river. Eastwards of this the table-land is strewed over with ammonites at an elevation of 16,500 feet. Nay, Dr Gerard found mussels and cockles at the height of 15,500 feet above the sea, at the northern frontier of Khoonawoor. The presence of these organic remains at such a stupendous elevation attests that the sea once covered these heights." The other predominating masses of rock are clay slate, and mica slate, and blue slate, and gneiss. At the junction of the Speetee and Sutluj the cheeks of the gulf of the former are granitic, and perfectly mural for many hundred feet. Great numbers of sheep and cattle are reared here, and great quantities of wool, both raw and woven, are exported. Yaks are bred in the remoter parts in great numbers; and next to grain, these animals are accounted their greatest wealth. There is also a mixed breed between the yak and common hill-cow raised by the natives. The inhabitants of Khoonawoor are reputed to be Hindoos by descent, but their physiognomy is more indicative of a Tartar origin. They are very black, with now and then a flush of red in their faces. They are clearly a distinct race, in features and in manners and language, both from the Hindoos, and the Bhoteas, or inhabitants of the other mountain states. They have all an openness of countenance and a frankness of conduct and manner quite different from what is witnessed in the people of Bischur, Koolloo, and the Speetee of Ladauk. An unbounded confidence is placed in them by the Latakees, Cashmerians, and Bhoteas, who find them strictly honest. All our travellers, as Fraser, the Gerards, Herbert, and others, agree in this character of the natives, as distinct from

14 These specimens, as Colebrooke justly remarks, are not Saligrama stones containing the impressions of ammonites as in the upper valley of the Gunduk, but ammonites themselves, and cockle-shells: thus proving that organic remains of a former world have been found at elevations far surpassing those at which they have been found in the Andes of Quito and Peru.

all around them. The natives of Khoonawoor all profess the religious system of Lamaism. Not less than five different dialects are spoken in Khoonawoor; and each resembles the other in a multitude of words. The words differ chiefly in their terminations, but the language itself is totally different from that of the Bhoteas, and also from any spoken on the southern side of Himalaya. The people of Soongnaum speak the Tibetian dialects, and a language totally different from that of Khoonawoor. In such a mountainous region no cities can be expected; villages only, and these small, are found in the bottoms of the valleys, or on the banks of rivers or torrents. Our limits will not allow us to indulge in topographical details; but the following is a table of the elevations, &c. of the beds of the Speetee and Sutluj in Khoonawoor:

Bed of the Speetee at Rangreek, the highest ascended spot,

Do

do
do

do

Fort of Dankar,

Manes village,

Lari

do

Do

do

at Shealkhur,

do of the Sutluj at its junction with the Speetee,
Height of the rope-bridge over it at this confluence,
Bed of the Sutluj at Numjea,

Breadth of do at do

Bed of the Sutluj at Pooaree village,

Do

do junction with the Bhaspa,

12,600 feet.

Neert 12 miles below,

Bed of the Sutluj at Rampore, capital of Bischur,

Direct distance from Neert to Numjea,

Average descent of the Sutluj by this, per mile,
Road distance from Neert to Numjea,

Average descent of the Sutluj by the road,

3,260
2,912

74 miles.

78 feet.

140 miles.

42 feet.

Oondes, or highest valley of the Sutluj.] Whilst the Speetee of Ladauk pays a small tribute to the surrounding states, and Khoonawoor, as a dependency of Bischur, is under the surveillance of the British government in India, this large district has remained under the sway of the Celestial court ever since Tibet was placed under a Chinese viceroy, subsequent to the expulsion of the Ghorkalees, in 1792. This region has the Speetee of Ladauk and Khoonawoor on the N.W.; the district of Chayanthang and the Khaillas range on the N.; Proper Tibet on the E. and S.E.; and on the S. and S.W. it is parted from the districts of Kemaoon, Gurwhal, and Bischur, by the stupendous Himalaya. It includes the whole upper valley of the Sutluj, from the pass of Piming S.E. to its termination in the angle formed by the junction of the Himallah and the Caillas, S.E. of the Mansarawar lake. It includes also the valley and course of the Paratee river, the main branch of the Speetee up to its source in the great dividing ridge which separates this district from the territory of Ladauk. It is surrounded on all sides, except at the gorge of the Sutluj below Shipke, by the Himallah and the Caillas. The whole thus inclosed is called the Oondes, or Oorna Disa, that is, the land of wool,' by the Hindoos. But we are told, on later authority—that of captain Hodgson if we remember right—that the term Oondes means the land of snow.' Both terms may apply well enough to it, as it abounds in both articles, and the shawi wool goats cannot exist but in a snowy region such as this. It is sub

6

divided into a number of districts, of which we only know some of the names, as those of Chaprong and Toling, to the N.W. of Daba, and those of Takklacote, and Gharewdon, or Gurdon, to the S.E. Of the two ranges which inclose it, that of the Caillas is seemingly the highest; and the angle where the two ranges meet is perhaps the loftiest spot on the terrestrial surface, being the great dividing line whence the rivers of Tibet flow to different points of the compass. Whilst Mr Moorcroft and his companion Mr Hearsay have the credit of being the only Europeans who crossed the frozen defiles of the Caillas since the days of father Andrada, succeeding travellers have only had a glimpse of that more northern range which bounds on the S. the upper valley and source of the Singchoo or Indus. The range appears to run in a N.W. direction, and has its sides and summits very thickly covered with snow. It is clearly seen from the passes of Keobrung and Hangarang; and from this latter pass it was seen so thickly covered with snow that not a rock could be distinguished by a telescope of large magnifying power. The prominent features in this lofty valley are the two famed lakes of Rhawanhrad and Mansarowar, through which the Sutluj runs. These lie S.E. and N.W., and the latter is S.E. of the former. They have not yet been sufficiently explored on all sides, so as to enable us to give a clear and distinct account of them. The Mansarowar, or Sacred Lake,'-for the appellation is Shanscrit,-is bounded on the S. by the Himallah; on the E. by the prolongation of the Caillas; and on the N. and W. by very high land, under the form of mountain, table-land, ravine, and slope, all declining towards it as a profound fluid hollow. Its shape approaches to an oval, lying between 81° 10′ and 81° 25' E. long. and 30° 12′ and 30° 23′ N. lat. according to Moorcroft's map of his journey, being 15 miles long by 11 broad. It must be remarked, however, that he did not see its eastern extremity, so that we cannot be exactly sure of its longitudinal extent. Though both in the Lamas' map and by the universal consent of the Hindoos, the Sutluj (the southern branch of the Ganges in the Lamas' map) issues out of this lake, yet Moorcroft could find no outlet from it on the N.W. and S. sides, yet the Chinese governor of Takklacote assured Mr Webb that the Mansarowar lake had but one outlet and that into the Rhawanhrad lake; so that both Moorcroft's pundit and the Latakee traveller were right in affirming that it had a communication with the latter lake, and Moorcroft wrong in denying it. This outlet, it seems, however, is frequently dry, and it is probable, as Webb thinks, that the difference of level between the two lakes is considerable, and that a subterraneous communication must exist between them, as one periodical channel could not possibly carry off the redundant waters of more streams which fall into this oval bason. It is surprising that Mr Moorcroft never thought of tasting the water, as that would have gone far towards determining the point. As it is about 80 miles S.E. of Daba, and the nearest point of the Sutluj to the Nitee pass, whose river-bed is 14,924 feet above the sea, the elevation of this lake must be considerably more: there is, perhaps, 2000 feet of difference at least, as the course of the Sutluj is so rapid that our traveller could hardly keep his footing though mounted on a yak. Between the low and high water mark are numerous skeletons of yaks, which, in going towards the lake in severe weather, fall into the drifts of snow which then fill the intermediate space. A great many Lama monasteries and temples front this lake in elevated situations, with all the usual insignia of the worshippers of Boodha. The former appear to be retreats for both sexes, as a nun came out of one of