parts of the mountains, which, on the south side of the
Shayuk, rise very abruptly to a height of perhaps 18,000
feet.
The summit of the ridge was not less than 14,700 feet
above the sea. At this elevation, the snow, on southern
exposures, had, by eleven a .m., quite melted, under the
influence of a bright sun. Along the ridge, tufts of a
prickly Statice, still displaying the remains of flowers,
were very common, and a few stunted trees of juniper
occurred at intervals. The descent from the ridge was
exceedingly abrupt (three thousand feet in less than a
mile), into a narrow valley, in which I encamped among
the fields of a summer village named Boghdan, now, like
the one I had left in the morning, deserted by its inhabitants,
who had gone for the winter to the village of Chu-
lungka, nine miles distant, on the banks of the Shayuk.
I was now in the district of Chorbat, the ridge which I
had just crossed being the boundary of Nubra on the west.
The Boghdan ravine, though very narrow and tortuous,
is well wooded with small trees of poplar and willow,
and with shrubs, chiefly of Jlippophari and Myricaria.
These plants are entirely confined to the level bottom of
the ravine, forming a belt, ten or twenty feet wide, on
each side of the little stream. After a descent of three
miles, I again joined the Shayuk, along which a journey
of four days brought me to Siksa, the principal village
of Chorbat, encamping on the way at the villages of Chu-
lungka, Turtuk, and Pranu.
The district of Chorbat is a dependency of the government
of Iskardo, which, like that of Le, is subject
to Kashmir. The desert country by which Nubra and
Chorbat are separated has, for the present, acted as a
barrier to the further extension eastward of the Mahom-
medan religion, which is now universally that of the people
of the whole of the Iskardo (or Balti) district, as well
as of Dras. On the Indus, and in the valleys south of
it, there is no uninhabited tract between the two, so that
the Mahommedan and Buddhist population are in direct
contact. The result is, that Mahommedanism is in that
part gradually, though very slowly, extending to the eastward.
In this part of its course the Shayuk river is in general
very rapid, and is hemmed in so closely by the mountains
on both sides, that little space is left for the accumulation
of alluvium, except where considerable lateral
streams join the main river. The barrier by which Chorbat
is separated from Nubra is the most contracted part
of the valley, and the general ruggedness by degrees becomes
less marked as we continue to descend the river.
The mountains, everywhere steep, rocky, and inaccessible,
close in general to within a quarter of a mile of one
another, and their projecting spurs, at short intervals,
advance quite to the centre of the valley, forming deep
bays, either filled with sand or occasionally occupied by
platforms of conglomerate, on the top of which, where
water is procurable, there is generally a village. The
river, winding from one side of its channel to the other,
washes the foot of each rocky spur, so that the road frequently
quits the level of the river to ascend abruptly
the rocky hills, which are often so steep as to be only
accessible by means of scaffoldings of wood, propped up
against the face of the perpendicular cliffs by trunks of