Part 7 (1/2)
[Sidenote: THE PITI RIVER.
_August, 1847._]
An abrupt descent followed, of not less than seven or eight hundred feet, into a wide steeply-sloping valley, descending from the north to join that of Hango. On the surface of this hollow, the road pa.s.sed among a mult.i.tude of large angular boulders of limestone, irregularly scattered over the surface. This limestone was much like that of the Hangarang pa.s.s, and as it nowhere occurred _in situ_ on the road, the boulders must have come from the hills on the upper part of the lateral ravine. A small spring of water and a solitary willow marked the centre of the valley, beyond which the road again ascended slightly, till on rounding a corner, the Piti river came into view, at the bottom of a most remarkable rocky ravine. Full in front, just beyond the river, was a scarped rock of great height; it was of a dark grey colour, and was traversed in every direction by immense white veins. Round this precipice, which seemed to project beyond the general ma.s.s, the river swept in a deep curve, of which the convexity was towards me.
The mountains on the right bank of the river, which formed the termination of the range on which I stood, seemed not less steep than those opposite, for the road, instead of pa.s.sing round them without change of level, rose rapidly as it turned to the left, till it had attained an elevation of at least 12,000 feet, at which height it wound among precipitous rocks of hard dark slate, covered with bushes of _Ephedra_, and scattered trees of _Juniperus excelsa_. When fairly round the rocky projecting range, the village of Lio was discovered more than 2000 feet below, in a narrow ravine, on the bank of a small stream descending from the north-west, and close to its junction with the Piti river. The descent was very abrupt, in a rocky ravine among large boulders, partly of slate, partly of granite. This rock occurred in thick veins in the clay-slate, most abundantly on the lower part of the precipices which rose on the left hand during the descent.
[Sidenote: LIO.
_August, 1847._]
Lio, at an elevation of 9600 feet above the sea, is a considerable village, with a large tract of cultivation, disposed in terraces from three to six feet above one another. The crops of wheat and barley had been all cut, but there were many fields of buckwheat in full flower, and of millet (_Panic.u.m miliaceum_) still quite green. Numerous apricot-trees, from which the fruit had long been gathered, were interspersed among the cultivated lands. Surrounded on all sides by very precipitous mountains, which reflect the sun's rays, Lio appears to enjoy a great amount of heat, and the weeds which bordered the corn-fields were rank and abundant, and included many species which had not been seen at the higher villages. _Salvia glutinosa_, almost the only remaining Simla plant, burdock, sow-thistle, lucerne, and melilot, were the commonest weeds. A little _Cuscuta_ was common on these latter. No tree of any kind occurred in the valley, nor on the slopes on either side. Elevation could not be the cause of this, the height being much lower than the line of upper limit of tree vegetation in the outer Himalaya, and the temperature of the valley, as was evident from the kinds of grain cultivated, very much greater than it would have been at the same level, in the more rainy climates nearer the plains of India.
The ravine through which the Lio stream runs is narrow and rocky, and contains a great number of transported blocks of various sizes, scattered irregularly over the surface. Close to the village there is a curious isolated rock, separated by the stream from the mountain ma.s.s with which it has evidently once been connected.
[Sidenote: CROSS THE PITI RIVER.
_August, 1847._]
On the 25th of August we crossed the Piti river, a little above Lio, and ascended to the village of Nako, on a very steep ridge, which descended from the great mountain Porgyul. After leaving the cultivated lands of Lio, which extend for half a mile from the upper part of the village, we ascended the right bank of the Piti river for nearly a mile, to a bridge, by which it is crossed. The river ran here in an extremely narrow ravine, precipitous mountains rising on either side. Its banks were steep, and covered with loose s.h.i.+ngle, the _debris_ of the precipices above. The stream is of considerable size, but much inferior to the Sutlej where we had last observed it close at hand, though I believe it is nearly as large as that river, at the point of junction of the two. The Piti runs in this part of its course with great rapidity, and is probably of considerable depth.
[Sidenote: ASCENT TO NAKO.
_August, 1847._]
The bridge was situated at a bend of the river, where the rocky banks contract more than usual. It was similar in structure to that over the Sutlej at w.a.n.gtu, but much smaller, and in so dilapidated a state, that it could scarcely be expected to last another year. The ascent to Nako was throughout steep, the difference of elevation being about 2500 feet, and the distance not more than two miles and a half. When at a sufficient height above the narrow dell in which the Piti runs, a good view was obtained of the mountains by which we were surrounded, which rose on all sides in rugged precipices. The steepness of the cliffs allowed their geological structure to be well seen. The fundamental rock, wherever I saw it, appeared to be clay-slate, sometimes pa.s.sing into chert or quartzy sandstone. This basal rock was everywhere traversed by innumerable veins of quartz and granite, which exhibited no signs of parallelism, but ramified in every direction.
These veins were often of great thickness. Not unfrequently, indeed, the ma.s.s of granite much exceeded the slaty beds between which it was interposed; but its connection with other veins of more moderate size rendered it evident that it had been injected into the slate.
Behind the village of Lio a thick deposit of alluvial clay was discernible, which seemed to suggest the idea of the valley having formerly been a lake; and at no place where I had seen these clayey acc.u.mulations was this hypothesis so plausible, for the precipices south of the junction of the Lio stream, rose almost perpendicularly for more than 1000 feet above the Piti river, and approached so close to one another, that their disruption was at least a possible contingency.
The slopes, as we ascended, were covered with boulders of granite in countless profusion, and the vegetation was extremely scanty, _Ephedra_ being the most abundant plant observed. On the upper part of the ascent the road crossed a little streamlet, which was conducted in an artificial channel to irrigate a few fields of wheat. The margins of this little stream, and a belt a few feet in width on both sides, where the ground was swampy, were covered with a dense thicket of _Hippophae_ and rose-bushes, among which grew thickly and luxuriantly a scandent _Clematis_, and _Rubia cordifolia_, mint, dock, and thistles. The number of species altogether was scarcely more than a dozen, but the brilliant green formed so delightful a contrast with the prevailing monotony, that what in a more fertile country would have been pa.s.sed as a mere thicket of thorns, to my eyes appeared a most beautiful grove of graceful shrubs; and I lingered in the swampy ground, till I had traversed it repeatedly in every direction, and completely exhausted the flora.
[Sidenote: NAKO.
_August, 1847._]
Nako is a smaller village than Lio, and from its elevation (12,000 feet) has no fruit-trees; but at the base of the cultivation, which is extensive, there was a copse of willows and poplars. The predominant crop was barley, now quite ripe, and being cut; the species was the common one, not _H. aegiceras_, but the ears were very short, and the return must, I should think, have been very small. There was abundance of water, which ran in every direction through the fields. The little streamlets had a narrow belt of green on their margins, consisting of small gra.s.ses, several gentians, and _Potentillae_, one of which I could not distinguish from _P. anserina_, a _Polygonum_ very like _P.
viviparum_, and, most remarkable of all, a small orchideous plant, which seemed to be a species of _Herminium_.
[Sidenote: BUDDHIST TEMPLES.
_August, 1847._]
At Nako, we had a most satisfactory proof of the little estimation in which the lamas, or priests of the Buddhist religion, hold their religious buildings, the apartments furnished to us in the village being the different parts of the temple, surrounded with full-sized figures of the different incarnations of Buddha, in sitting posture, each with his hands in the position which is conventionally used to indicate the individual. The remarkable forms and system of the Buddhist religion, as practised in Kunawar and Ladak, have been so often and accurately described, that it would be useless for me to attempt to give any account of what I could, from want of previous knowledge, very imperfectly understand, and from my other occupations scarcely at all inquire into. The gradual transition, in ascending the Sutlej, from Hinduism to Buddhism, is very remarkable, and not the less so because it is accompanied by an equally gradual change in the physical aspect of the inhabitants, the Hindus of the lower Sutlej appearing to pa.s.s by insensible gradations as we advance from village to village, till at last we arrive at a pure Tartar population. The people of upper Piti have quite the Tartar physiognomy, the small stature and stout build of the inhabitants of Ladak, to whom also they closely approximate in dress. To what extent mere climatic influences may cause these differences, and how far they depend on an intermixture of races, I do not pretend to decide. It is impossible, however, to avoid being struck by the coincidence between these physical and moral changes in the human race, and the gradual alteration in the forms of the vegetable world, which are observable as we advance from a wet to a dry climate.
[Sidenote: PORGYUL _August, 1847._]
From Nako we proceeded, on the 26th of August, nearly due north, to Chango, about ten miles up the Piti valley. Nako is situated on the shoulder of the great mountain Porgyul, which rises to a height of 10,000 feet above that village, and Chango is at the very extremity of a long spur given off by that mountain further east: it is therefore separated from the Nako spur by a valley of considerable size, which descends abruptly towards the Piti river. Our road lay in a long sweep round the deep bay formed by this valley, at an elevation not lower than that of Nako, crossing in the most receding part a foaming torrent which descends from the perpetual snows of the mountain behind. Half a mile from Nako, and scarcely lower than that place, is a patch of cultivation, watered, as I was surprised to find, by a conduit brought more than a mile along the side of the hill from the stream which occupies the mid-valley; the water of which was collected into several ponds, one above another, in which it was kept in reserve till required for irrigation. The crops cultivated were buckwheat and a species of _Bra.s.sica_, both in flower. A number of poplars and willows were planted along the stream, but no fruit-trees.
[Sidenote: ANGULAR BOULDERS.
_August, 1847._]
Beyond this cultivated tract, the road, till we reached Chango, was entirely barren. For several miles we continued to pa.s.s through a most extraordinary acc.u.mulation of transported blocks, scattered irregularly on the gently sloping sides of the mountains. They covered a very large area, and occurred in such almost incredible profusion, that the road seemed to lie in a hollow among fragments of rock on all sides. They were all angular; and at so considerable an elevation as 12,000 feet, I have now no hesitation in referring them to glacier action. The rock _in situ_ was clay-slate, with copious granite veins, and the boulders were in general the same. In one place, however, a dark mica-slate, with large crystals of cyanite, was the predominating rock of the erratic blocks, which no doubt might have been traced to its source in the ravine above, as I nowhere saw it _in situ_ during the day.
After pa.s.sing the torrent which occupies the centre of the valley, the road very gradually approaches the Piti river, from which it had at first receded considerably. We could now observe that the mountains which overhung the river in this part of its course were much less precipitous, and the valley wider and more open, than around Lio.
Alluvial beds of great thickness everywhere rested on the ancient rocks, a.s.suming the most diversified forms, but in general thicker and higher on the sides of the hills, at some distance from the river, than in the centre of the valley. About a mile and a half from Chango, the road began to descend rather rapidly along a dry water-course filled with huge boulders. It then crossed a stream, which had cut for itself a very deep channel through the alluvial conglomerate, and ascended slightly to the village of Chango. Close to the last stream was a bed of very fine clay, which had a thickness of at least twenty-five feet, and did not appear to contain any stones, pebbles, or fragments of rock. This clay had quite a different appearance from the alluvial conglomerate, which covered it, without appearing to pa.s.s into it. It occurred extensively in several places in the neighbourhood of Chango, and had entirely the appearance of having been deposited in a very tranquil lake, while the alluvium which rested upon it, and, therefore, was of more recent formation, contained so many fragments of rock, all seemingly angular, that its origin could scarcely be a.s.signed to deposition under water, unless under some very peculiar circ.u.mstances.