The few plants about were generally small tufted _Arenarias_ and woolly _Compositae,_ with a thick-rooted Umbellifer that spread its short, fleshy leaves and branches flat on the ground; the root was very aromatic, but wedged close in the rock. The temperature at 4 p.m. was 23 degrees, and bitterly cold; the elevation, 15,770 feet; dew-point, 16 degrees. The air was not very dry; saturation-point, 0.670°, whereas at Calcutta it was 0.498° at the same hour. The descent was to a broad, open valley, into which the flank of Nango dipped in tremendous precipices, which reared their heads in splintered snowy peaks. At their bases were shoots of debris fully 700 feet high, sloping at a steep angle. Enormous masses of rock, detached by the action of the frost and ice from the crags, were scattered over the bottom of the valley; they had been precipitated from above, and gaining impetus in their descent, bad been hurled to almost inconceivable distances from the parent cliff. All were of a very white, fine-grained crystallised granite, full of small veins of the same rock still more finely crystallised. The weathered surface of each block was black, and covered with moss and lichens; the others beautifully white, with clean, sharp-fractured edges. The material of which they were composed was so hard that I found it difficult to detach a specimen. Darkness had already come on, and the coolies being far behind, we encamped by the light of the moon, shining through a thin fog, where we first found dwarf-juniper for fuel, at 13,500 feet. A little sleet fell during the night, which was tolerably fine, and not very cold; the minimum thermometer indicating 14.5 degrees. Having no tent-poles, I had some difficulty in getting my blankets arranged as a shelter, which was done by making them slant from the side of a boulder, on the top of which one end was kept by heavy stones; under this roof I laid my bed, on a mass of rhododendron and juniper-twigs. The men did the same against other boulders, and lighting a huge fire opposite the mouth of my ground-nest, I sat cross-legged on the bed to eat my supper; my face scorching, and my back freezing. Rice, boiled with a few ounces of greasy _dindon aux truffes_ was now my daily dinner, with chili-vinegar and tea, and I used to relish it keenly: this finished, I smoked a cigar, and wrote up my journal (in short intervals between warming myself) by the light of the fire; took observations by means of a dark-lantern; and when all this was accomplished, I went to roost.