Nachar, at which we took up our quarters for the night, is a very large village, by far the most considerable yet passed, with many good houses, much cultivated land, and great numbers of fine fruit-trees. Walnuts, peaches, apricots, and mulberries, were all common; and I saw one grape-vine, which bore a good many bunches of fruit. The crops cultivated were chiefly millet and buckwheat, with a good many fields of _Amaranthus_ and _Chenopodium_. The fruit-trees were evidently, from their numbers and luxuriance, a very valuable part of the possessions of the inhabitants; and it was very interesting to meet with the vine, though only in small quantity, and evidently not yet in a thoroughly suitable climate. The elevation of the village, which occupied a great extent of the hill-side sloping down towards the Sutlej, now close at hand, was nearly 7000 feet.
[Sidenote: EASTERN BOUNDARY OF KULU. _August, 1847._]
Nearly opposite Nachar, the district of Kunawar, which had hitherto been confined to the south bank of the Sutlej, extends to both sides of the river; the province of Kulu, which had hitherto occupied the northern bank, being bounded on the east by the mountain-chain which separates the waters of the Beas river from those of the Piti, a tributary of the Sutlej. By this very lofty chain, the villages on the north side of the Sutlej, to the east of the point now reached, are entirely cut off from the valley of the Beas, and naturally become connected with the district immediately opposite to them, with which alone they have an easy communication. Kulu, till the campaign of 1846, had belonged to the Punjab; but one of the results of the Sikh war, in that year, was the transfer of that district to British rule, so that the Sutlej, in its lower course, no longer served as a boundary between hostile states. In Kunawar, the north side of the river is the most important, because it is more populous and fertile than the south, not only from its more favourable exposure, but because the chain to the south of the Sutlej continues to increase in elevation as it proceeds eastward, while that on the north becomes gradually lower as it advances towards the confluence of the Sutlej and Piti rivers.