and, therefore, unwillingly parted with; I therefore resolved
to return to Iskardo, and remain there till the
return of spring should enable me to resume my travels,
and to visit the district further down the Indus, before
crossing into Kashmir.
My return journey, being from a severe to a milder
climate, was sufficiently agreeable. At first a succession
of bright and clear days reduced the temperature very
much. The thermometer fell to zero in the mornings,
and the frost throughout the day was intense. I was
no longer able to inhabit my tent, which I had continued
to occupy up to the period of my arrival at Dras,
where, in the Sikh fort, I found, rather to my surprise,
a room, with a fire-place and chimney, allotted for my
accommodation by the kindness of the commandant.
In descending again towards the Indus, I took shelter
in the villages, occupying, if possible, a cow-house in
preference to one used by the inhabitants. The houses
are generally built of waterwom stones, without cement,
but plastered with mud outside and inside. The roofs
are flat; the rafters are unsawn trees or branches of poplar,
covered with willow twigs, over which is laid a thick
coating of mud. A hole in the centre of the roof serves
for a chimney, the fire being made in the centre of the
floor. In some of the poorer villages the houses were
less elaborate, consisting merely of wattle-work of willow
twigs, covered with a thin coating of clay.
In the open plain below Dras I observed many withered
stems of Pranc/08, the celebrated Umbelliferous
plant so much valued by the inhabitants of Dras as a
food for their sheep, still bearing ripe seeds. Juniper,
too, was common, even along the bank of the stream.
As I descended the river, I found that a very few days
had made a great change in the temperature. The river
was everywhere hard frozen, and all the little streams
which ran down the mountain-sides were coated with a
thick shell of ice. More than once I saw a waterfall
with a covering, perhaps a yard in thickness, of clear
blue ice, under which the little streamlet could be distinctly
seen. At Ulding, though the cold was severe,
I found the ground partially free of snow, so that the
amount of fall, at that distance from the central chain of
mountains, had been quite insignificant.
On the 19th of December, on which day I regained
the valley of the Indus, it was again snowing heavily,
after an interval of exactly seven days. The river was
now entirely frozen over, and so solid, that one of my
servants, a native of India, losing his way in the snowstorm,
instead of turning to the left on arriving at the
Indus, walked across the river to a village on the right
bank, without being aware that he had quitted the proper
road.
Instead of keeping the left bank of the river, as I had
done in my upward course, I crossed it on the ice about
three or four miles above the village of Kartash, or Kar-
mang, as it is also called, and kept on the north side till
within a mile of Tolti. About two miles below Kartash,
there are a succession of rapids in the stream, which extend,
without much intermission, considerably more than
a mile, and must produce a very considerable change in
the elevation of its bed. The river was nowhere frozen
between Kartash and Tolti, the stream being too rapid