the commencement of Rondu, a distance by the road of
twenty-nine miles, but not, I should think, more than
twenty along the course of the river, as the road winds
very much in crossing ridges. This is equivalent to a
fall of about fifty feet per mile, which, for a stream discharging
so vast a volume of water, is very considerable
indeed, but not more than is indicated, by the general
turbulent course of the river.
The villages of Rondu, though mostly small, have
abundance of fruit-trees. The apricot is still the commonest
of these; but there are also many fine walnuts,
and plenty of vines climbing up the trees, and remarkable
for the great size of their trunks. Willows are very
common, and two kinds of poplar, and now and then
there occurs a plane-tree of enormous girth and stature,
which must, no doubt, afford a most welcome shade from
the rays of the too-powerful sun of summer, the heat of
which, in so deep and rocky a ravine, must be very oppressive.
The willow and poplar had already begun to
show signs of vitality, the flower-buds being almost ready
to expand; the other trees seemed still quite inert.
All over the hills of Rondu the juniper* is rather
common, and seemingly quite at home both on the
* This juniper has a very extended range in altitude, being common
in the drier parts of the Himalaya at elevations of 12-13,000 feet, and
in some parts of Tibet, where it meets with a higher summer temperature,
even as high as 14—15,000 feet. I t is the Juniperus excelsa of
Wallieh, and, so far as the point can be decided by dried specimens,
seems identical with specimens in the Hookerian Herbarium, collected
in Karabagh and Sakitschiwan by Szowitz, and communicated to .Sir
W. J . Hooker by Fischer. The Taurian specimens of J. excelsa from
Bieberstein are, however, a good deal different, and are perhaps only a
form of J. Sabina.
higher ridges, and in the bottom of the ravine close to
the river. It forms generally a low bush, but occasionally
I saw small trees, and once, in a level tract close to
the river and near a village, a considerable tree perhaps
forty feet high. The young plants had made considerable
shoots, and were covered with longish acicular patent
leaves, very different from the short adpressed scaly
leaves of the adult plant.
Rondu is remarkable for producing another Coniferous
tree, indeed a true pine, namely, Pinus excelsa, which occurs
in small groves in several places on the south side
of the river, at elevations from eight to ten thousand
feet above the sea. It was first observed opposite the
village of Siri, but is more plentiful above the fort of
Rondu. One or two trees occur close to the river, and
on the north side, so that I was enabled to get specimens
and ascertain the species. The occurrence of this
tree must be considered to indicate a greater degree of
humidity than exists in the upper parts of the Indus
valley, so that Rondu is the place of transition between
the Tibetan climate and that of the eastern Punjab, into
which the Indus passes at its point of exit from the
mountains.
The mountains of Rondu contain much granite, which
occurs in great mass at the bridge opposite the fort. In
this place the granite occupies the- lower part of the ravine,
close to the river, while the higher parts of the
mountains are composed of gneiss or clay-slate, sometimes
passing into sandstone, or of a highly crystalline
magnesian rock. The granite consists chiefly of quartz
and mica, the former, as well as the felspar, white, the