top, there were many pretty little spring flowers, which
did not extend far down. A Primula, Pedicularis, Gen-
tiana, leontopodium, Corydalis, and Cattianthemum, were
all in flower. On the northern slope of the mountain, a
wood of deciduous trees, still bare of leaves, commenced
a few yards below the summit. At first the trees were
all birch, but lower down a cherry and maple were mixed
with i t ; the former with young leaves, and just-formed
racemes; the latter only recognizable by the last year’s
leaves, which strewed the ground. A few horse-chesnut
trees were also seen near the top.
The neighbourhood of the village of Avantipura is one
of the most interesting places in which the lacustrine
strata of the Kashmir valley can be studied, as there is
distinct evidence of the existence in that place of deposits
much more recent than those which extend over the
whole plain, and which were therefore formed when the
valley was occupied by a large lake. Avantipura was
formerly the site of a very large town, the capital, I
believe, of the kingdom; built in the shape of an amphitheatre
in a deep semicircular bay, enclosed by two low
spurs, which project from the mountain Wasterwan, which
rises immediately behind.
The ruins of the ancient town are still visible,
consisting of heaps of stones, some of immense size,
indicative of large buildings, but none of them showing
the slightest traces by which the shape or structure
of the edifices could be determined. These ruins extend
all round the deep recess in the mountains, and terminate
below quite abruptly, without any apparent cause,
in a perfectly horizontal line along the mountain-side.
The mountain behind is an isolated peak, furrowed by
numerous ravines, which are dry except immediately after
rain. The place would therefore appear singularly inappropriate
as the site of a large city, were there not,
I think, sufficient evidence that a lake existed in front
of the town, the surface of which was on a level with
the horizontal line by which the ruins are abruptly
terminated.
The ruins of the ancient city stand upon the lacustrine
clay of the Kashmir plain, and are therefore posterior
in age to the period when the valley was occupied
by one large lake. Immediately in front of the ancient
ruins, between them and the small modern village of
Avantipura, which is situated on the banks of the Jelam,
there occur beds of fine brown-coloured clay, containing
in great quantity fragments of pottery, with here and
there small pieces of charcoal and bone. In one place
on the bank of a small ravine, which then probably
carried a streamlet into the lake, I found the clay
to contain, mixed with the broken pottery, numerous
shells, some fresh-water and some land species, and all
the same as are common at the present day in the river
Jelam, or on the grassy hill-sides in the valley. The
place where these shells occur is fifty or sixty feet above
the river.
The appearance of this evidently very modern deposit
is exactly that which would no doubt be exhibited, were
the present lake close to the city of Kashmir dried up,
and a section of its bed exposed. This lake contains
abundance of shells, and in the neighbourhood of the
town it is made the receptacle of refuse of every kind,
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