1 MAS—MAT. 41
2 ardly ; the women coarse and profligate. The heads of these
3 people are conical, in consequence of a custom which prevails of
4 moulding them into that shape by tying a strong band round the
5 head of the infant shortly after birth. The grain cultivated is
6 generally wheat or barley. Grapes are produced in great abun-
7 dance and excellence, but rarely made into wine, as the people
8 are Mahometans, principally of the Shia persuasion, though the
9 rajah is a Sunni. Mastuch is in lat. 36° 12’, long. 72° 31’.
10 MASTUNG.—See Mustune.
11 MATAN, in Kashmir, a Karywa, or table-land, extending from
12 the town of Islamabad to the base of the range inclosing the val-
13 ley on the east. Notwithstanding its situation below those vast
14 mountain masses, it is devoid of streams or other natural means
15 of irrigation,! but consisting almost entirely of very fertile alluvial ' Jacquemont,
16 earth, it bears, where cultivated, abundant crops of wheat, barley, Se
17 and most kinds of grain, excepting rice. The great depopulation
18 of Kashmir, however, has rendered it, for the most part, a waste,
19 presenting a surface of the finest verdure, unbroken by tree,
20 shrub, or human habitation. With' the exception of a fakir’s
21 dwelling, recently fallen in ruins, ‘“ There is not a vestige of
22 a human habitation upon the green waste. A solitary villager
23 may be seen passing from one district to another; a few cattle
24 may be grazing in the distance, and a shepherd or two may be
25 seen collecting their flocks for the night, whilst the bleating of
26 their charge only breaks in upon the silence without disturbing
27 the extraordinary tranquillity of the scene.”? * Moorcroft seems ? Vigne, Kashmir,
28 greatly to underrate its extent in stating it to be ‘‘ commonly a a
29 mile in breadth.”* Hiigel assigns to it a breadth of four or five 2 nfoorer. PurJ.
30 miles in every direction, and adds, that it appeared almost inter- Bot! !l
31 * Hiigel! also mentions the solitude and unbroken silence of this fertile 1 xascumir, 11.458,
32 plain, which formerly was irrigated by means of a great aqueduct now com-
33 pletely ruined. ‘‘ Das Plateau ist, wie mit der Hand geebnet villig boum-
34 und strauchlos, kein Feld, keine Hiitte ist auf demselben. Spuren fritherer
35 Bebauung aind jedoch durch die noch bestehende Abtheilung in Felder sicht-
36 bar; sie wurden vormals durch eine grosse, nun zerstorte Wasserleitung
37 bewissert.”” Jacquemont, on the contrary, states that it was almost entirely
38 under corn crops :—'‘ Le plateau de Motonne est presque entigrement cul-
39 tivé en céreales diverses.’? The discrepancy, however, is explainable by the
40 supposition that the desolating change took place between 1831, the time of
41 Jacquemont’s visit, and 1835, when the Karywa was surveyed by Hiigel,? and 2 14, i. 303,
42 probably by Vigne.