The villages have generally a few fruit-trees, as well as a good many poplars and willows, which yield almost the only timber the inhabitants can command. The walnut and _Elæagnus_, both of which trees find their upper limit in Nubra, are so extremely scarce that they are not available for such purposes.
In most parts of Nubra the soil is very generally saline, the dry grassy plains which are common on the banks of the streams being generally covered with a copious efflorescence of carbonate of soda; while the abundance of _Salsolæ_ and other Chenopodiaceous plants on the dry alluvial plains, and even on the rocky hills, seems to prove that the saline matter is not confined to the immediate vicinity of water, or to the lowest levels, but is very generally diffused over the surface.
[Sidenote: VALLEY OF NUBRA RIVER. _October, 1847._]
The valley of the Nubra river, for upwards of twenty miles, is very similar in general character to that of the Shayuk. The same wide gravelly expanse occupies its centre, forming a plain of one or two miles in width, through which the river runs in many branches. A great part of this gravelly plain, particularly on the right side of the valley, is covered by a dense thicket of _Hippophaë_, extending continuously for four or five miles, usually impervious, except in certain beaten tracts, and tenanted by vast numbers of hares. The gravel on which this jungle grows is almost on a level with the river, so that it is very generally swampy, and traversed here and there by little streamlets of water. The _Hippophaë_ is here a small tree, attaining a height of fifteen feet, with a short thick trunk and stiff crooked spinous branches.
In several parts of the course of the Nubra river, low hills rise in the valley, isolated, or nearly so, from the mountain ranges behind, and forming, therefore, a remarkable feature. On one of these, on the right bank of the river, is situated the little fort and village of Chirasa, a considerable mass of houses, of a class a little better than those usual in the district, and conspicuous from their elevated position. The rock on which they stand is composed of a hard porphyry, which has been injected from below, and has displaced the black slate, which is the more usual rock in the lower part of this valley.