dog, if my guides are to be believed. Tigers used to be very common and mischievous, but since the English have frequented the country are scarce, and in comparison very shy. There are also many wolves and bears, and some chamois, two of which passed near us. My sepoys wanted me to shoot one, and offered, with my leave, to do so themselves, if I did not like the walk which would be necessary. But my people would not have eaten them. I myself was well supplied with provisions, and I did not wish to destroy an innocent animal merely for the sake of looking at it a little closer; I therefore told them that it was not my custom to kill any thing which was not mischievous, and asked if they would stand by me if we saw a tiger or a bear. They promised eagerly not to fail me, and I do not think they would have broken their words. After winding up "A wild romantic chasm that slanted Down the steep hill athwart a cedar cover, As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted we arrived at the gorge of the pass, in an indent between the two principal summits of mount Gaughur, near 8,600 feet above the sea. And now the snowy mountains, which had been so long eclipsed, opened on us in full magnificence. To describe a view of this kind is only lost labour, and I found it nearly impossible to take a sketch of it; such as I was able to make I, however, send with this packet. Nundidevi was immediately opposite; Kedar Nâth was not visible from our present situation, and Meru only seen as a very distant single peak. The eastern mountains, however, for which I have obtained no name, rose into great consequence, and were very glorious objects as we wound down the hill on the other side. The guides could only tell me that "they were a great way off, and bordered on the Chinese empire." They are, I suppose, in Thibet. Bhadrinâth is a famous place of pilgrimage for the Hindoos. The Khasya guide, however, said that the temple was considerably on this side the snow, which last none but the deotas had visited before the "Sahib Log" (Europeans) came into the country. Mr. Traill has ascended a considerable way up it. Almorah, I was told, might be seen from hence; the hill on which it stands, they made me see, I believe, but I could not distinguish any houses. On mount Gaughur 1 found the first ice which I have come in contact with. The little streams on the northern side of the hill had all a thin crust on them: and the hoar frost, in one or two places, made the path so slippery that I thought it best to dismount from the pony. Indeed, though the sun was already high, and I was warmly drest, a walk down the hill to our halting-place at Ramghur, was by no means unpleasant. Ramghur is a very small and poor village, the first which 1 had seen in Kemaoon, seated by a fine rapid stream in a narrow winding valley, the sides of which, to a very great height, are cultivated in narrow terraces, with persevering and obstinate industry, though the soil is so stony that many of the little fields more resemble the deposit of a torrent than an arable piece of ground. The Company's warehouse and guard-house stand at a little height above the village; and the head man of the place came to meet me with some small trout, and, what to me were a great rarity, some young potatoes. The view much reminded me of Driostuen, in Norway; and though the snowy mountains were not visible, and though, except on mount Gaughur, there was not much wood, the picture formed was exceedingly striking. There was a castle at Ramghur during the time of the Gorkha power, now dismantled and gone to decay. A good deal of iron ore is also found in the neighbourhood, which the inhabitants of the small village were employed in washing from its grosser impurities, and fitting it to be transported to Almorah for smelting. Why they do not smelt it on the spot I could not learn, since there is wood enough on mount Gaughur. I walked to the village in the afternoon, and found Mr. Traill's chuprassee putting all the milch-goats which the poor people possessed in requisition, to obtain some milk for my tea. The goats were very reluctant, but a little was at length obtained, which, much against the chuprassee's will, I paid for, and also gave a few pice to some of the children, which soon drew a crowd after me. The houses, people, children, and animals, showed marks of poverty. Almost all the children were naked, and the grown persons, except their black blankets, had scarcely a rag to cover them. The houses were ranged in a line, with a row of still smaller huts opposite, which seemed to be for their cattle, though in England they might have passed for very poor pigsties. The houses, indeed, were little better, none of them high enough to stand up in, the largest not more than ten feet square, and the door, the only aperture, a square hole of about four feet every way. The people were little and slender, but apparently muscular and active; their countenances intelligent and remarkably mild, and one or two of their women were not very far removed from pretty. This tribe of the Khasya nation, the chuprassee told me, are decidedly of migratory habits, dividing their time between the hills and the forest, according to the seasons, and it was thus that he accounted for the miserable state of their habitations. They very cheerfully and civilly showed me 396 PASSAGE OF THE NEARER RANGE OF THE HIMALAYA. the manner in which they washed the ore, which is done by enclosing it in large wicker baskets, like those made to catch eels in England, surrounded partially by a goat-skin, but with a hole at the smaller extremity. This is placed under a stream of water conyeyed in the same manner, and within an almost similar hut as the corn-mill, which I had seen the day before, and the earth is thus washed away, leaving the iron behind. Even here are numerous traces of the superstition of India. We passed some rudely carved stones, with symbols of brahminical idolatry; and three miserable-looking beggars, two brahmins, and a viragee, came to ask alms, in a strange mixture between Khasya and Hindoostanee. A traveller, wrapped in long cotton cloths, with a long matchlock on his shoulder, a shield and sword on his left side, on a pretty good horse, and attended by a ragged saees carrying two petarrahs, passed us and went on to the village. Abdullah said that he knew him by his dress to be a Sikh, and that he had probably been in search of employment as a soldier, either from the Raja of Kemaoon, the Gorkhas, or, perhaps, the Chinese. He was a very picturesque figure, and curious as a specimen of the irregular mercenary troops of India. My own sepoys had a grievous quarrel with the "Goomashta," or agent of the Company's warehouse, and I was appealed to loudly by both parties; the soldiers calling on me as Ghureeb purwar, the Goomashta, not to be outdone, exclaiming, "Donai Lord Sahib! Donai! Raja." I found that good flour, which sold at Ruderpoor at thirty-eight seer for the rupee, was here at fifteen seer only, and that the mixture which the man offered to the soldiers was really so full of bran, and even chaff, as to be fit for nothing but an elephant. The man said, in reply, that he went by the Company's measure, and the regulation price; that all flour, except such as we saw, was scarce and dear in this part of Kemaoon; that he was allowed, in consequence of his situation, to charge more; and that the people and soldiery of the country desired no better than that which he furnished. I terminated the quarrel at last by paying the difference in price, amounting to no more than one rupee, between the good and the bad, and all sides were satisfied and thankful. November 26.-This morning we proceeded along a narrow valley to a broken bridge over the torrent, so like, in scenery and circumstances, to that called Alarm Brug, in Dovre in Norway, that I could have almost fancied myself there. We forded the stream without difficulty, though over a very rugged bed; but, during the rains, one of the chuprassees told me, a rope, which I saw hanging loosely across the ruined arch, was to transport the postman or any other passenger. He was seated in a basket hung by a loop on this rope, and drawn over, backwards and PASSAGE OF THE NEARER RANGE OF THE HIMALAYA. 397 forwards, by two smaller ones fastened to the basket on each side. This is an ingenious though simple method of conveyance, which is practised also by the catchers of sea-fowl on many parts of the coast of Norway; it was the only way formerly in use of passing torrents or chasms in these countries; and the stone bridges which the English have erected are very ill able to resist the floods of the rainy season, which rush down these steep descents with great violence and rapidity. Bridges on Mr. Shakespear's plan are best calculated for this country. The snowy peaks had been concealed ever since we descended Gaughur, but the country is still very sublime; less woody, less luxuriant than the southern side of that mountain, but still moulded in the most majestic forms, and such as I hardly knew whether to prefer or no, to the splendid scenery which I had passed. The road is yet more rugged and steep than that over the Gaughur, and the precipices higher; or rather, perhaps, their height is more seen, because the trees are fewer and more stunted, and there is nothing to break the view from the brow to the very bottom, with its roaring stream, and narrow shingly meadows. I know not what is the reason or instinct which induces all animals accustomed to mountain travelling, such as mules, sheep, black cattle, and such ponies as I was now riding, to go by preference as near the edge as possible. I have often observed, and been puzzled to account for it. The road is, indeed, smoother and most beaten there, but it has been this predilection of theirs, which has, in the first instance, made it so. My present pony had this preference very decidedly, and I often found him picking his way along, what I should have thought, the extreme verge of safety. I was satisfied, however, that he knew best, and therefore let him take his own course, though my constant attendants, the two sepoys, often called out to him, "Ah, Pearl, (his name,) go in the middle, do not go on the brink." The fact is, that though there is some fatigue there is no danger in any part of the road, if a person is properly mounted and not nervous. The long-legged sepoy, who is, I find, a brahmin, as well as his comrade, is certainly an excellent walker; when I stopped, as I made a point of doing from time to time, for my party and my horse to take breath, he always said he was not tired; and he fairly beat the Kemaoon chuprassees, though natives of the country. Both he and the elder man profess to like their journey exceedingly; and the latter was greatly delighted this morning, when, on climbing a second mountain, we had a more extensive and panoramic view of the icy range than we had seen before, and the guides pointed out Meru! "That, my lord, (he cried out,) is the greatest of all mountains! out of that Gunga flows!" The younger, who is not a man of many words, merely muttered Ram! Ram! Ram! 398 PASSAGE OF THE NEARER RANGE OF THE HIMALAYA. I had expected, from this hill, to see something like a tableland or elevated plain, but found, instead, nothing but one range of mountains after the other, quite as rugged, and, generally. speaking, more bare than those which we had left, till the horizon was terminated by a vast range of ice and snow, extending its battalion of white shining spears from east to west, as far as the eye could follow it, the principal points rising like towers in the glittering rampart, but all connected by a chain of humbler glaciers. On one of the middle range of mountains before us, a little lower than the rest, some white buildings appeared, and a few trees, with a long zigzag road winding up the face of the hill. This, I was told, was the city and fortress of Almorah. The other nearer features in the view were some extensive pine forests, some scattered villages of rather better appearance than those which we had left, and the same marks of industry in the successive terraces by which all the lower parts of the hills are intersected. These have by no means a bad effect in the landscape. The lines are too short and too irregular to have a formal appearance; the bushes and small trees which grow on their brinks look at a little distance exactly like hedges; and the low stone walls, so far as they are discernible at all, seem natural accompaniments to steeps so rugged and craggy. I ob The mountains which I passed in these stages were all, so far as 1 saw, of limestone. There are, indeed, vast detached masses of granite lying every where on the sides of the hills, in the valleys and the torrents; and the peaks of the mountains, if I had climbed up to them, would doubtless have proved of the same substance. But limestone and coarse slate are the materials of which the road and walls are made; and the few cottages which I have seen of a better appearance than the rest, (I passed two more villages in this day's march,) are built and roofed with the same materials, as are also the Government warehouses. I saw many European plants to-day. Cherry-trees were numerous. served a good deal of honey-suckle and some hips and haws, and one of the guides brought me a large handful of bilberries. I saw, however, no ice; and, indeed, I had many opportunities of observing, that, high as we had climbed in the course of the day, we were not so high as when on the top of Gaughur. Nothing could be finer than the climate. Though the sun was hot before we got to our station, the distance being seven coss, it was not unpleasant at any time of the day; nor, though in the shade it was certainly cold and chilly, was it more so than is usually felt in England in the finest part of October. My sepoys, who, as all water-drinkers are, are critics in the beverage, praised exceedingly the purity and lightness of the little streams which gushed across the road. Mr. Boulderson, |