Having commenced our day's journey before daybreak, in order to complete the march before the extreme heat had commenced, we stopped here to breakfast, under the shade of a fine mango-tree. The neighbourhood of the village was well cultivated, with extensive rice-fields and a fine grove of tropical trees—mango, Ficus Indica and religiosa, Melia Azedarach and Azadirachta, Grewia, oranges, and plantains. Our late residence in a cool climate made us feel the heat much, though the temperature at nine in the morning was not much more than 80°. After breakfast, we continued our journey up the valley, to Nirt or Nirat, a distance of six or seven miles, and next day we reached Rampur, the capital of Basehir, twelve miles further, and still in the Sutlej valley.
The district of Basehir is an independent hill state, governed by a rajah, whose dominion also extends over Kunawar; it commences a very little north of Kotgarh, and occupies the south side of the river Sutlej and the mountain slopes above it, as far east as the confines of Kunawar. The valley of the Sutlej, in the western part of Basehir, from Rampur downwards, has an elevation of little more than 3000 feet, Rampur (140 feet above the bed of the river) being 3400 feet above the level of the sea[4]. The river, at the season of our journey, which was the height of the rains, at which time it is at its largest, is an impetuous torrent, of great size, but very variable in breadth, foaming along over a stony bed, with generally very precipitous rocky banks, and filled with large boulders. During the rainy season it is extremely muddy, almost milky, and deposits in tranquil parts of its course a considerable amount of white mud. The valley is generally very narrow, with steep bare hills on either side, quite devoid of trees and covered only with a few scattered bushes and long coarse grass. In the bays or recesses on the mountain-sides, between the terminations of the rocky spurs which descend to the river, the valley is often filled with a hard conglomerate rock, the cement of which is calcareous, evidently (geologically) of very recent origin. These patches of conglomerate are flat-topped, and often scarped towards the river, and are frequently 200 feet and more in thickness. They differ in degree of consolidation only from ordinary alluvial deposit, so that they appear to owe their preservation from the denuding effects of river action, to the calcareous matter, which has cemented the pebbles and sand into a solid rock.
VEGETATION.
August, 1847.
The road follows throughout the course of the river, rising sometimes 200-300 feet, to pass over rocky spurs; at other times it lies on the surface of the boulder conglomerate, and more rarely close to the river. Here and there is a small village, with a few rice-fields, but the greater part of the valley is utterly sterile. Like the valleys of the outer Himalaya, that of the Sutlej here exhibits a curious mixture of the ordinary vegetation of the plains, with forms which point out the mountainous nature of the country. The whole flora is strongly characteristic of a dry soil and an arid climate. The mountain ranges to the west and south, no doubt, intercept a good deal of rain; and the lofty mountains, 10-12,000 feet in height, which, on the right and left, rise rapidly from the river, appropriate to themselves a great part of the moisture which reaches the valley. We may, therefore, in the absence of direct meteorological observations, infer, from the physical structure of the valley, and from the nature of its vegetation, that its climate is drier than that of the valleys at the base of the Himalaya.
The Sutlej valley cannot, of course, be properly compared with the base of the mountains farther east, where luxuriant forest covers all the slopes; but when contrasted with the Pinjor valley, or the low hills above Kalka, it is only on a careful comparison that a difference is to be observed, and then, perhaps, more by the absence of forms abundant in them than by any marked addition of new ones. The ordinary shrubs of the Sutlej, at 3000 feet, are Adhatoda Vasica, Carissa edulis, Colebrookea, Rottlera tinctoria, and some species of Bœhmeria, all characteristic of the outer hills, and the two first common plains plants. The remarkable Euphorbia pentagona is also common. Butea, Ægle, and Moringa do not occur, nor are there any bamboos. Flacourtia sepiaria, Capparis sepiaria, and Calotropis, which are three of the commonest plants of the plains, were also not observed. A large white-flowered caper (Capparis obovata, Royle) and a glabrous Zizyphus were the most remarkable new forms. The herbaceous vegetation differed scarcely at all from that of the plains, consisting chiefly of species which, during the rainy season, spring up in the lightest and driest soils.
Mountain plants were only occasional, and mostly such as at Simla descend on the dry grassy slopes into the valleys: a berberry and bramble (Rubus flavus), Plectranthus rugosus, which is a grey and dusty-looking shrub, Melissa umbrosa, Micromeria biflora, a little Geranium, Ajuga parviflora, a Galium, Senecio, Aplotaxis candicans, and one or two Umbelliferæ. They did not, however, amount to a twentieth part of the whole vegetation, and the aspect of the flora was quite subtropical. A little Eriophorum, which is everywhere common in arid places at the base of the Himalaya, from Assam to the Indus, was frequent in the crevices of the rocks. Ferns were very scarce, only two or three being observed.
RAMPUR.
August, 1847.
The town of Rampur is a considerable place, on a small level tract of ground, about a hundred feet above the bed of the river Sutlej, which it overhangs. The houses are substantially built, in the form of a square, with an open space in the centre; they are mostly one-storied, and have steeply-sloping slated roofs. The town has a good deal of trade with Tibet, principally in shawl wool, and is the seat of a small manufacture of white soft shawl-cloths. The river is here crossed by a rope suspension-bridge, of a kind very common in the lower valleys, which has often been described. It consists of nine stout ropes, which are stretched from one side of the river to the other. The width of the Sutlej at the bridge, according to Captain Gerard, by whom it was measured, is 211 feet.
During our stay at Rampur, Major Cunningham directed my attention to the alteration of the level of the river at different periods of the day, from the variable amount of solar action on the snows by which it is fed. This effect he had noticed on his former visit to the mountains, and we had frequent opportunities of observing it during our journey. At Rampur the diurnal variation was not less than three or four feet, the maximum being, I believe, during the night or early in the morning. In the immediate vicinity of snow, the streams are highest in the afternoon, but as the distance increases the period of greatest height becomes by degrees later and later.
Except on our two first days' journey, we had been extremely fortunate in weather since leaving Simla. The day of the 8th was very cloudy and oppressive, and the 9th, on which we remained stationary at Rampur to make arrangements with the Rajah for our further progress through Basehir and Kunawar, was rainy throughout. The rain, however, was light, and did not prevent the Rajah from visiting us in the afternoon, impelled, I suppose, by a desire to see our apparatus and arrangements for travelling. We were lodged in an excellent upper-roomed house of his, overhanging the Sutlej, and not far from his own residence, which lies at the east end of the town, and externally is quite without beauty, presenting to view nothing but a mass of dead walls. The Rajah seldom remains during the hot season at Rampur, as he has a second residence at Serahan, twenty miles up the river, and 7000 feet above the level of the sea, in which he usually spends the summer, though during 1847, for some reason or other, he remained during the greater part of the year at Rampur.