-Last night the fort was evacuated as well as that on the
opposite side, and the Syud has made off into the hills. It cleared up
in the morning but is now as threatening as ever, the ditch of the fort
is twelve or fifteen feet deep, but like all Affghan ditches it is
narrow. The parapets were very slight, so that a more powerful battery
would have kept down their fire completely; no injury had occurred to the
inner gate except its being off one of its hinges, or rather out of one
of its sockets. The entrance _was thus round the gate_, not
through the gateway: it was protected by a thick screen of brushwood and
mud, all of the shots from the second position had lodged in the wall
close to the side of the gate; every thing was carried off, except a
little grain, and some gunpowder.

_20th_.--Continued rain.

_21st_.--Snow within 500 feet.

_22nd_.--Moved camp.

_23rd_.--Continued rain and sleet, almost passing into snow.

[Section of Kooner valley: m436.jpg]

_Desideratum_.--Required to ascertain positively whether the shingle and
boulders are in all cases not derived from the boundary mountains: that
they are not in many cases is clear, witness the declivities of slate
rocks, totally incapable of assuming the form of boulders. The
proportions of the cultivated to the uncultivatable land is previously
given rather in favour of the tillable portion, this is always a light,
almost impalpable powder, consistent when wetted: generally the soil owes
any fertile qualities it has here, to the presence of water; thus the
Dusht-i-Bedowlut produces nothing beyond its indigenous plants from
having no water.

The transition from the extremely bare mountains of the Hindoo-koosh as
seen on the road to Bamean, to the well wooded ones of the Himalaya,
takes place at Jugdulluck, the hills, round which, produce plenty of
Baloot: in this direction, the forests become much thicker as we proceed
to the eastward. There is a mountain near Jallalabad, which at once
arrests the attention from its being wooded. Nothing like it occurring
between this and Cabul, on any part of the chain of mountains distinctly
referrable to the Himalayas. Wooded as this is, it is nothing to the
woods on the mountains about Pushut, the size of these has been well
demonstrated by the late snows: some bare places occur, which
appearances, Abdool says are from cultivation of Kohistanes. Baloot
abounds, Dodonea also is now coming into flower! a curious fa