JULY 28th.—­A march of nine miles up the valley to Kungan, taking with me as before only four coolie loads of baggage; my boatman accompanies me.  Met Scott, of the 88th, three or four miles from Ganderbul, the first European I have seen since the 12th.  This is a narrow and beautiful valley, down which the Scind river rushes foaming and roaring.  Its waters are icy cold and its colour also seems to partake of its snowy origin, for it is white, not only with foam, but the water itself in small quantities is as though it had come out of a milky jug.  Grand hills stand on either side, and up the valley I occasionally got glimpses of high and rugged snow peaks.  Several natives came to me with different ailments, I gave them rough directions whereby to benefit, but what they wanted was a gift of medicine (of which I have none.) They fancy every Englishman is an adept in the art of healing, and that English physic especially Tyrnhill’s Pills, possesses magical powers.

JULY 29th.—­To Toomoo, six miles, a shorter march than I intended, for they told me at Kungan that Toomoo was twelve miles distant.  However, when I arrived, the temptation to stop was too strong to be resisted.  In marching one gets very weary about the sixth or seventh mile, but this passes off, and you can then go on comfortably for almost any distance, provided you resist the first feelings of fatigue, and do not give way to it, as I have done to-day.  The mountains are now huge towering masses, rising thousands of feet above the valley; they have lost all smoothness of outline, and their upper portions are bare and rough, cragged, and pine clad.  Instead of having merely whitened peaks, snow fields extend down the sides.  The scene is one of wild majestic grandeur.  What tremendous agonies in past ages must have been employed to produce such vast upheavals.  One cannot help contemplating with awe the possibility of the world again becoming violently rent and shaken to its foundations by the forces which though now comparatively inert, still exist beneath us and occasionally give sad proof of their undiminished power.  In the present day the slow but continued action of this subterranean power is in some parts perceptible (as in South America) and we have no guarantee that it may not suddenly acquire increased energy, and overwhelm our fairest lands with a run too terrible to be imagined.  Stinging nettles abound here, of the tall sort that grow so rankly on old earth heaps and in dry ditches.  I placed my hand among them, delighted to be stung again by English friends; the sensation is so far preferable to mosquito bites.  Besides it took me back to “childhood’s happy hours,” when with bramble torn breeches and urticarious shin, I forced the hedges, apple stealing—­I have stolen apples to-day for a tart which is now baking—­robbed the trees of them for they are no man’s property.  Just above here on the other side of the valley is a very perfect crater (of course extinct) for there