filled with alder, oak, walnut, and Celtis, hut without any
of the superb horse-chesnuts which had been so abundant
in the humid valleys on the northern face of the range;
nor was there any Rhododendron. Crossing a considerable
stream, the road ascended through fine forest to
the crest of a ridge, beyond which there was a long and
steep descent of at least 1500 feet, to the village of Nas-
mon, on which tropical vegetation made its appearance^
very abruptly. Pinus longifolia grew scattered along
the sides of this hill, and Daphne, pomegranate, the olive
of the Sutlej valley, Vitew Negundo, Colebrookea, Rottlera,
Sissoo, Adhatoda Vasica, a thorny Celastrus, Acacia
modesta and Lebhch, and Rauhinia variegata, made their
appearance in succession, in the order in which I have
named them. Most of these are the same as the shrubby
forms common in the Sutlej valley at Rampur f but the
Celastrus and Acacia modesta are plants of the plains of the
western Punjab, and do not extend so far west as that
river. The range parallel to the Chenab on the north,
which I had just crossed, has probably a granitic axis,
for boulders of granite were common on the upper part
of the ascent on both sides of the pass, though I did not
anywhere see that rock in situ. On both sides the first
rock exposed was a fine-grained gneiss, with large crystals
of felspar. Lower down, on the north face, I observed
mica-slate, with garnets; and in the bed of the
Banahal river ordinary clay-slate occurred.
Nasmon is a very large but scattered village, with
much cultivation. It lies on a high platform of alluvium,
considerably above the bed of the river. Plane,
orange, apricot, and pear trees grew in the gardens,
with Melia Azedarach, and a few trees of the European
cypress (C. sempervirens), bearing apparently ripe fruit.
The day was oppressively warm, the thermometer rising
above 85° in the shade.
On the 13th of May, I crossed the Chenab by a
bridge about a mile above Nasmon. The descent to the
bank of the river was gradual, and very bare. Rocks
of a black clay-slate and of conglomerate, in nearly vertical
strata,, formed the bed of the river, which was as
large as the Sutlej at Rampur, and very much swollen
and muddy. The bridge is the simplest form of jhula,
a single set of ropes, from which a wooden seat is suspended,
which is pulled from side to side by means of
a rope, worked from the rocks on either side of the river.
The banks of the river were adorned with a profusion of
bushes of Nerium odorum, in full flower, and highly ornamental.
The vegetation along the river exhibited the
same curious contrast of tropical and temperate forms,
which I have already described as characteristic of the
dry valleys of the interior of the Himalaya, at elevations
between two and four thousand feet; and the tropical
plants were so similar to those which I observed on the
Sutlej, that I need not particularize them. There was
no forest in any part of the valley near the river, but a
few trees of Pinus longifolia grew scattered on the bank;
and on the stony ground which skirted the stream, there
was a low jungle of the same tropical shrubs as had occurred
on the lower part of the descent the day before. I
saw also Zizyphus nummularia, a shrub which is eminently
characteristic of a dry climate, being common in the
most desert and rainless districts of the Punjab. The