As I approached Tolti the valley of the Indus became much more rugged and narrow. A long gentle ascent to a ridge more than a thousand feet above the bottom of the valley, but which dipped abruptly to the river, occupied the latter part of the march. At Tolti the belt of cultivation is very narrow, just skirting the river on very narrow platforms of alluvium, which are irrigated by artificial canals carried with considerable labour between the fields and the mountains. Tolti was the most gloomy village which I had yet seen, the precipitous mountains forming a circle all round it, and almost shutting out the light of day. The bird's-nest fort in the ravine behind the village, perched on the top of a rock (in a most untenable position, though probably well suited for defence against sudden attack), accorded well with the gloomy aspect of the place. The temperature was here considerably lower than in the more open valley, as large patches of snow lay still unmelted in the fields, though four days had elapsed since its fall. At Gol, two days before, it had quite melted. On a bank a mile or two below Tolti, I saw a few trees of _Populus Euphratica_, just recognizable by a few withered leaves which still remained on the tree.
From Tolti, I made three marches to Tarkata, a small village on the Indus, six miles below its junction with the river of Dras. The general aspect of the valley of the Indus was but little changed in this distance, notwithstanding a very long and remarkable bend of the river above Kartash, in which its direction is to the eastward of north. From Tolti, the easiest road in an upward direction crosses the Indus, and proceeds on the right bank; but to avoid the labour of crossing, I suppose, my guides conducted me by a road on the left bank. On this side, the lower part of the valley is so steep as to be impracticable; and I found it necessary to ascend at once from Tolti on a stony ridge, almost directly away from the river. The ascent was long and fatiguing; the ridge being capped, in the same manner as that above Kunes on the Shayuk, with masses of alluvium. The ridge was more than 1500 feet above the river, and its upper part was covered with snow, through which the path lay for four or five miles, after which it descended very abruptly to the river, which had been in sight almost all the way, generally running among precipitous rocks, but with a few villages scattered at intervals on the northern bank. After regaining the bank of the river, the road was for five or six miles nearly level, passing opposite the village of Kartash, with a fort on a hill. Here still resides the Rajah Ali Sher Khan, the most intelligent of the princes of Balti; though now past the prime of life, he still retains the intelligence and kind hospitality for which he is so deservedly praised by Vigne.