only new plant was a species of Labiates, a coarse-
growing under-shrub, probably a species of Ballota.
The hard conglomerate of the day before did not
again occur, various forms of clay-slate being the prevailing
rock. The steep slopes were, however, very
frequently covered with a talus of angular fragments,
which obscured the structure of the lower portions of
the mountains, at the same time that it revealed the
nature of the higher strata, which would otherwise have
been inaccessible. Red and green jaspery rocks, very
hard and brittle, were abundant, with various forms of
greenstone, at times closely resembling syenite. These
were evidently the same rocks as had been met with
in the neighbourhood of Hanle, and along the river
for some way below that town. Their recurrence here,
therefore, tended to confirm what had for some time appeared
to me to be the prevailing strike of these formations,
namely, from S.S.E. to N.N.W.
After following the course of the Indus for about
eight miles, we turned abruptly to the left, ascending a
narrow gorge, in which a considerable stream flowed
from the south-west. The slope was, from the first, considerable,
and the course of the ravine very winding.
Steep rocky cliffs rose precipitously on both sides, and
generally approached so close to one another that their
tops could not be seen. The channel of the stream was
¡1^ tfrst stony and quite bare, but aftei a mile bushes of
the Myricaria became common, fringing the stream, but
nowhere growing at any distance from it. These gradually
increased in size and abundance, and at our
camping place, three miles from the commencement of
the ravine, they were generally small trees, many of them
not less than fifteen feet in height, with stout erect trunks
five or six inches in diameter.
The morning of the 21st of September was bright and
clear, and intensely frosty, the unsettled weather which
had continued since our leaving Hanle having quite disappeared.
Our road still lay up the gorge, which had
quite the same appearance as on the previous day. High
precipices, or very steep banks, hemmed in the stream
on both sides. Small trees of Myricaria still continued
abundant in the immediate vicinity of the water $ elsewhere,
all was as desolate as ever. Some of these trees
were not less than a foot in diameter; the trunk was
generally very short, often branching within a foot of the
base. At intervals there was a good deal of alluvium,
partly in the shape of coarse conglomerate, partly a fine
micaceous sand, filling up the recesses at the bends of
the ravine. After three miles, the ravine suddenly expanded
into a narrow plain, the surface of which was
irregularly undulating, and completely encrusted with
salt. As this plain was interesting in consequence of
the production of borax, we encamped on the bank of
the little stream about a mile from the end of the
gorge, and remained stationary the next day in order to
examine the nature of the locality in which the borax is
found.
As the day’s journey was a very short one, we arrived
at the salt plain by eight o’clock a .m . The air was still
quite frosty. While our tents were being pitched on a
dry bank a little way above the stream, we proceeded to
its bank, and were not a little surprised to find the water
m 2