Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/278

 rupees during the season. He may depend upon the shops for supplies, and may draw his pay through the collectorate of Dhera.

These stations are situated on a narrow ridge of mountains, with numerous offshoots and eminences, on the summits of which a house is generally built. A great proportion of the houses are built upon terraces cut out of the solid rock; the eaves of the back of the house being lower than the bank. Of these stations it may be said, that man has done every thing for them, and nature very little; they do not contain an acre in all, of level ground, and not a bit of good building stone. At Missourie there is no timber within twenty miles, fit for carpentry, and few trees of any sort; with naked limestone rocks sticking out every where, very little soil fit for vegetation, and no water within 300 feet or more of the ridge. The tops of the rocks have been cut away, or their ribs have been scooped out into flats, to obtain foundations for the houses; and fine roads of many miles in extent have been blasted and cut out of the solid rock at immense labour and expense, affording the most picturesque views; the mountains are very steep, and here and there precipitous with continuous descents of eight or ten miles between top and bottom. The wooding, as I have said, is scanty and only fit for burning, the fine oak trees being for the most part hollow; the rhododendron