[Sidenote: BRIDGE OVER THE CHENAB. _May, 1848._]
The descent to Nasmon, which is only 2700 feet above the level of the sea, was very steep. At first it led along the face of a bare hill, but soon entered a shady ravine, filled with alder, oak, walnut, and _Celtis_, but 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 Nasmon, 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, _Vitex Negundo_, _Colebrookea_, _Rottlera_, _Sissoo_, _Adhatoda Vasica_, a thorny _Celastrus_, _Acacia modesta_ and _Lebbek_, and _Bauhinia 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; 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 shrubby temperate forms were not numerous, being chiefly _Rosa Brunonis_, and the Himalayan pear, _Lonicera diversifolia_, _Myrsine bifaria_, and _Jasminum revolutum_, all plants which have a very wide range in the Himalaya.