This liquid is known as "cedar oil;" and is used by the hill people as a remedy for skin diseases--as also for all scrofulous complaints in cattle.
The deodar is of very slow growth; and this unfits it for being introduced into European countries--except as an ornamental timber for parks and pleasure grounds.
It was chiefly on account of its property of being easily split into planks, or pieces of light scantling, that the deodar was selected for making the sides of the ladders.

To have cut down the trunks of heavy trees to the proper thickness for light ladders--with such imperfect implements as they were possessed of--would have been an interminable work for our inexperienced carpenters.

The little axe of Ossaroo and the knives were the only tools they possessed available for the work.
As the deodar could be split with wedges, it was just the timber wanted under these circumstances.
While engaged in "prospecting" among the deodar trees, a pine of another species came under the observation of our adventurers.

It was that known as the "cheel." It might have been seen by them without attracting any particular notice, but for Karl; who, upon examining its leaves, and submitting them to a botanical test, discovered that within the body of the "cheel" there existed qualities that, in the circumstances in which they were placed, would be of great value to them.

Karl knew that the "cheel" was one of those pines, the wood of which, being full of turpentine, make most excellent torches; and he had read, that for this very purpose it is used by all classes of people who dwell among the Himalaya mountains, and who find in these torches a very capital substitute for candles or lamps.