Seven or eight miles from Baltal, I found an uninhabited house, at a place called Sonamarg[17], where a bridge crosses the Sind river. Snow had been continuous all the way, diminishing in depth as we descended the river. A mile or two before reaching Sonamarg, the stream approaches close to the mountains on the north side of the valley, barely leaving a passage for the road, which for some distance skirted the base of steep cliffs. In one of the ravines which here furrowed the mountain slopes, I had an opportunity of seeing the descent of an avalanche. While crossing the ravine I was warned by the sound that a snow-slip was approaching, but had abundance of time to retreat to a place of safety before it came near. When the avalanche came into sight, the ravine, which was narrow and deep, was completely filled by balls of snow of various dimensions, which continued to flow past for several minutes. The snow-slip terminated in the river, which was speedily blocked up for two-thirds of its width with an immense accumulation of snow.
At Sonamarg the Sind river bends abruptly towards the south, and enters a rocky gorge, down which its stream advances with great rapidity, over a steeply inclined bed, very rocky and much interrupted by rapids. Leaving Sonamarg on the morning of the 16th of April, I crossed the river, and after a mile and a half of level ground bare of trees, still covered with snow, I entered a thin forest of pine and silver fir, which continued to the entrance of the gorge. The silver fir (_Picea Webbiana_) was a fine straight tree, with short horizontal or drooping branches, and its leaves were very variable in length.
When I had fairly entered the narrow gorge of the river, I found that it was in many places still blocked up with snow, which had descended in avalanches down the narrow ravines, and had accumulated in the bed of the stream. We crossed the river three times on snow-beds. From the rapidity of the descent, however, the climate changed rapidly. After four or five miles there was no snow, except in ravines, where it had accumulated in avalanches, and at last even these had almost entirely melted away. Still snow lay in patches on the right bank of the river, in the village of Gagangir, at which I halted for the day; and on the left bank, which faced the north, and was therefore in shade, snow still covered the whole surface down to the bank of the river.