Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventurers in Tibet. Vol. 2 (of 2)

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

TRANS-HIMALAYA

DISCOVERIES AND ADVENTURES
IN TIBET

BY

SVEN HEDIN

WITH 388 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, WATER-
COLOUR SKETCHES, AND DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR
AND 10 MAPS

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1910

First Edition 1909
Reprinted 1910

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

CHAPTER XXXV

IMMURED MONKS

We had heard of a lama who had lived for the last three years in a cave in the valley above the monastery of Linga, and though I knew that I should not be allowed to see either the monk or the interior of his ghastly dwelling, I would not miss the opportunity of at least gaining some slight notion of how he was housed.

On April 16, 1907, eighteen months to a day after I had left Stockholm, dreary windy weather prevailed, with thickly falling snow and dense clouds. We rode up to Linga, past rows of fine chhortens, left the last dormitories behind us, saw an old tree-trunk painted white and red, passed a small pool with crystal-clear spring water thinly frozen over, and heaps of mani stones with streamer poles, and then arrived at the small convent Samde-puk, built on the very point of a spur between two side valleys. It is affiliated to the Linga monastery, and has only four brethren, who all came to greet me heartily at the entrance.

It is a miniature copy, outwardly and inwardly, of those we have seen before. The dukang has only three pillars and one divan for the four monks, who read the mass together, nine prayer-cylinders of medium size which are set in motion by leathern straps, a drum and a gong, two masks with diadems of skulls, and a row of idols, among which may be recognized several copies of Chenresi and Sekiya Kōngma, the chief abbot of Sekiya.

A few steps to the south-west we passed over a sheet of schist with two stone huts at its foot containing brushwood and twigs for burning. In Samde-pu-pe were two small temples with altars of mud. In one of them were idols of medium size and sea shells, and before them incense smouldered, not in the usual form of sticks, but in powder. It was strewn in a zigzag line, was lighted at one end, and allowed to smoulder away to the other. Within was a statue of Lovun with two lights before it, and a shelf with writings called Chöna. Rain water had percolated in and formed white vertical channels in the plaster, and under the ceiling kadakhs and draperies fluttered in the draught. Here the mice were less disturbed than in the ghostly castle Pesu.

Close at hand at the foot of the mountain is the hermitage, dupkang, in which a hermit spends his days and years. It is built over a spring which bubbles up in the centre of the single room, a square apartment with each side five paces long. The walls are very thick, and are in one solid mass, unbroken by windows. The doorway is very low, and the wooden door is shut and locked; but that is not enough, so a wall of large blocks and smaller stones has been built before the door, and even the smallest interstices between them have been carefully filled up with pebbles. Not an inch of the door can be seen. But beside the entrance is a tiny tunnel through which the hermit’s food can be pushed in. The amount of daylight which can penetrate through the long narrow loophole must be very small; and it does not shine in direct, for the front of the hut is shut in by a wall, forming a small court, which only the monk who brings the anchorite his daily ration may enter. A small chimney rises from the flat roof, for the hermit may make himself tea every sixth day, and for this purpose some sticks of firewood are pushed through the loophole twice in the month. Through the chimney, too, a feeble light may fall, and by means of these two vents the air is renewed in the cell.

“What is the name of the lama who is now walled up in this cell?” I asked.

“He has no name, and even if we knew it we durst not utter it. We call him merely the Lama Rinpoche” (according to Köppen, lama means quo nemo est superior, one who has no one over him; and Rinpoche means gem, jewel, holiness).

“Where has he come from?”

“He was born in Ngor in Naktsang.”

“Has he relations?”

“That we do not know; and if he has any, they do not know that he is here.”

“How long has he lived in the darkness?”

“It is now three years since he went in.”

“And how long will he remain there?”

“Until he dies.”

“May he never come out again into the daylight before his death?”

“No; he has taken the strictest of all oaths, namely, the sacred vow only to leave the cell as a corpse.”

“How old is he?”

“We do not know his age, but he looked about forty.”

“But what happens if he is ill? Cannot he get help?”

“No; he may never speak to another human being. If he falls ill he must wait patiently till he is better again or dies.”

“You never know, then, how he is?”

“Not before his death. A bowl of tsamba is pushed every day into the opening, and a piece of tea and a piece of butter every sixth day; this he takes at night, and puts back the empty bowl to be filled for the next meal. When we find the bowl untouched in the opening we know that the immured man is unwell. If he has not touched the tsamba the next day our fears increase; and if six days pass and the food is not taken, we conclude he is dead and break open the entrance.”

“Has that ever happened?”

“Yes; three years ago a lama died, who had spent twelve years in there, and fifteen years ago one died who had lived forty years in solitude and entered the darkness at the age of twenty. No doubt the Bombo has heard in Tong of the lama who lived in the hermitage of the monastery Lung-ganden-gompa for sixty-nine years, completely shut off from the world and the light of day.”

“But is it not possible that the prisoner may speak to the monk who pushes the tsamba dish into the loophole? There is no witness present to see that all is correct.”

“That could never happen and is not allowed,” answered my informant with a smile; “for the monk outside would be eternally damned were he to set his mouth to the loophole and try to talk to the recluse, and the latter would break the charm if he spoke from within. If the man in there were to speak now, the three years he has passed there already would not be put down to his credit, and he would not like that. If, however, a lama in Linga or Samde-puk falls ill, he may write his complaint and a request for the anchorite’s intercession on a piece of paper, which is placed in the tsamba bowl and pushed into the opening. Then the recluse prays for the sick man, and if the latter has faith in the power of prayer, and holds no unseemly conversation in the meantime, the intercession of the Lama Rinpoche takes effect after two days and the patient gets well again. On the other hand, the recluse never makes any communication in writing.”

“We are now only a couple of paces from him. Does he not hear what we are saying, or, at least, that some one is talking outside his den?”

“No, the sound of our voices cannot reach him, the walls are too thick; and even if it were the case, he would not notice it, for he is buried in contemplation. He no longer belongs to this world; he probably crouches day and night in a corner, repeating prayers he knows by heart, or reading in the holy books he has with him.”

“Then he must have enough light to read by?”

“Yes, a small butter lamp stands on a shelf before two images, and its light suffices him. When the lamp goes out it is pitch-dark inside.”

Filled with strange thoughts, I took leave of the monk and went slowly down the path which the recluse had only passed along once in his life. Before us was the splendid view which might never delight his eyes. When I had descended to the camp I could not look up the monastery valley without thinking of the unfortunate man sitting up there in his dark hole.

Poor, nameless, unknown to any one, he came to Linga, where, he had heard, a cave-dwelling stood vacant, and informed the monks that he had taken the vow to enter for ever into darkness. When his last day in this world of vanity dawned, all the monks of Linga followed him in deep silence, with the solemnity of a funeral, to his grave in the cave, and the door was closed on him for the rest of his life. I could picture to myself the remarkable procession, the monks in their red frocks, silent and grave, bending their bodies forward and turning their eyes to the ground, and walking slowly step by step as though they would let the victim enjoy the sun and light as long as possible. Were they inspired with admiration of his tremendous fortitude, compared with which everything I can conceive, even dangers infallibly leading to death, seems to me insignificant? For, as far as I can judge, less fortitude is required when a hero, like Hirosé, blockades the entrance of Port Arthur, knowing that the batteries above will annihilate him, than to allow oneself to be buried alive in the darkness for forty or sixty years. In the former case the suffering is short, the glory eternal; in the latter the victim is as unknown after death as in his lifetime, and the torture is endless, and can only be borne by a patience of which we can have no conception.

No doubt the monks escorted him with the same tenderness and the same sympathy as the priest feels when he attends a criminal to execution. But what can have been his own feelings during this last progress in the world. We all have to pass along this road, but we do not know when. But he knew, and he knew that the sun would never again shine warmly on his shoulders and would never produce lights and shadows on the heaven-kissing mountains around the grave that awaited him.

Now they have reached their destination and the door of the tomb stands open. They enter in, spread a mat of interlaced strips of cloth in a corner, set up the images of the gods, and lay the holy books in their place; in one corner they place a wooden frame like those go-carts in which infants learn to walk, and which he will not use till death comes upon him. They take their seats and recite prayers, not the usual prayers for the dead, but others which deal with the glorified light and life of Nirvana. They rise, bid him farewell, go out and close the door. Now he is alone and will never hear the sound of a human voice except his own, and when he says his prayers no one will be there to hear him.

What were his thoughts when the others had gone, and the short hollow echo had died away of the noise he heard when the door was shut for the last time, only to be opened again when he was a corpse? Perhaps something like what Fröding has expressed in his verse:

He hears the brethren rolling the heavy stones to the door with levers, piling them up one on another in several layers, and filling up all chinks with smaller stones and fragments. It is not yet quite dark, for there are crevices in the door, and daylight is still visible at the upper edge. But the wall rises. At length there is only a tiny opening through which the last beam falls into the interior of his tomb. Does he become desperate; does he jump up, thrust his hands against the door and try to catch one more glimpse of the sun, which in another moment will vanish from his sight for ever? No one knows and no one will ever know; not even the monks who were present and helped to block up the entrance can answer this question. But he is but a man and he saw how a flagstone was fitted over the hole through which a last ray of daylight fell; and now he has darkness before him, and wherever he turns there is impenetrable darkness.

He assumes that the other monks have gone down again to Samde-puk and Linga. How shall he pass the evening. He need not begin at once to read his holy books; there is plenty of time for that, perhaps forty years. He sits on the mat and leans his head against the wall. Now all his reminiscences come with great distinctness into his mind. He remembers the gigantic characters in the quartzite, “Om mani padme hum,” and he murmurs half dreaming the holy syllables, “Oh! thou jewel in the lotus. Amen!” But only a feeble echo answers him. He waits and listens, and then hearkens to the voices of his memory. He wonders whether the first night is falling, but it cannot be darker than it is already in his prison, his grave. Overcome by the travail of his soul, he sleeps, tired and weary, in his corner.

When he awakes, he feels hungry, crawls to the opening and finds the bowl of tsamba in the tunnel. With water from the spring he prepares his meal, eats it, and, when he has finished, puts the bowl in the loophole again. Then he sits cross-legged, his rosary in his hands, and prays. One day he finds tea and butter in the bowl and some sticks beside it. He feels about with his hands and finds the flint, and steel, and the tinder, and kindles a small fire under the tea-can. By the light of the flame he sees the interior of his den again, lights the lamp before the images, and begins to read his books; but the fire goes out and six days must pass before he gets tea again.

The days pass and now comes autumn with its heavy rains; he hears them not, but the walls of his den seem to be moister than usual. It seems to him a long time since he saw the sun and the daylight for the last time. And years slip by and his memory grows weak and hazy. He has read the books he brought with him again and again, and he cares no more for them; he crouches in his corner and murmurs their contents, which he has long known by heart. He lets the beads of his rosary slip through his fingers mechanically, and stretches out his hand for the tsamba bowl unconsciously. He crawls along the walls feeling the cold stones with his hands, if haply he may find a chink through which a ray of light can pass. No, he hardly knows now what it is like outside on sunny paths. How slowly time passes! Only in sleep does he forget his existence and escape from the hopelessness of the present. And he thinks: “What is a short earthly life in darkness compared to the glorious light of eternity?” The sojourn in darkness is only a preparation. Through days and nights and long years of solitude the pondering monk seeks the answer to the riddle of life and the riddle of death, and clings to the belief that he will live again in a glorified form of existence when his period of trial is over. It is faith alone which can explain his inconceivable fortitude of mind.

It is difficult to picture to oneself the changes through which the lama passes during successive decades in the darkness of his cell. His sight must become weak, perhaps be extinguished altogether. His muscles shrink, his senses become more and more clouded. Longing for the light cannot pursue him as a fixed idea, for it is in his power to write down his decision to curtail his time of trial, and return to the light, on one of the leaves of his books with a splinter dipped in soot. He has only to place such a paper in the empty tsamba bowl. But the monks had never known a case of the kind. They only knew that the lama who had been walled in for sixty-nine years had wished to see the sun again before he died. I had heard from monks who were in Tong at the time that he had written down his wish to be let out. He was all bent up together and as small as a child, and his body was nothing but a light-grey parchment-like skin and bones. His eyes had lost their colour, were quite bright and blind. His hair hung round his head in uncombed matted locks and was pure white. His body was covered only by a rag, for time had eaten away his clothing and he had received no new garments. He had a thin unkempt beard, and had never washed himself all the time or cut his nails. Of the monks who sixty-nine years before had conducted him to his cell, not one survived. He was then quite young himself, but all his contemporaries had been removed by death, and new generations of monks had passed through the cloisters; he was a complete stranger to them all. And he had scarcely been carried out into the sunlight when he too gave up the ghost.

In analysing the state of such a soul, fancy has free play, for we know nothing about it. Waddell and Landon, who took part in Younghusband’s expedition to Lhasa, and visited the hermits’ caves at Nyang-tö-ki-pu, say that the monks who have there retired into perpetual darkness first underwent shorter experiences of isolation, the first lasting six months, and the second three years and ninety-three days, and that those who had passed through the second period of trial showed signs that they were intellectually inferior to other monks. The cases which the two Englishmen have described seem not to have been so severe a trial as the one I saw and heard about in Linga, for in the Nyang-tö-ki-pu caves the lama who waited on the recluse tapped on a stone slab which closed the small opening, and at this signal the immured lama put his hand out of this door for his food; he immediately drew the stone shutter to again, but in this way he would at least see the light of the sun for a moment every day. In the cases described by Waddell and Landon the immured monks had passed some twenty years in confinement. Waddell, who has a thorough knowledge of Lamaism, believes that the custom of seclusion for life is only an imitation of the practice of pure Indian Buddhism, which enjoins periodical retreats from the world for the purpose of self-examination and of acquiring greater clearness in abstruse questions. In his opinion the Tibetans have made an end of the means.

Undoubtedly this opinion is correct, but it is not exhaustive. It may be that the future hermit has in religious delusion come to the decision to allow himself to be buried alive. But does he clearly conceive what this means? If he became dull and insensible like an animal in his cell, all his energy and his power of will would be deadened, and what seemed to him, when he entered, to be worth striving for, would gradually become more and more indifferent to him. But this is not the case, for he adheres firmly to his decision, and therefore his energy must remain unimpaired. He must possess a steadfast faith, an immovable conviction, which is exposed to a harder trial because he is alone and death alone can visit him in his cave. Possibly he becomes by degrees a victim of self-delusion, so that his longing for the last hour in the long night of his den gives place to the feeling that he is always at the moment when the hour-glass of time has run down. He must have lost all idea of time, and the darkness of the grave appears to him only as a second in eternity. For the means he formerly had of marking the flight of time and impressing it on his memory no longer exist. The changes from winter to summer, from day to night, are only made known to him by the rise or fall of the temperature in his den. He remembers that several rainy seasons have passed by, and perhaps they seem to him to follow closely on one another while his brain is clouded by monotony. It is inconceivable that he does not become insane, that he does not call out for the light, that he does not jump up and run his head against the wall in the agony of despair, or beat it against the sharp edges of the stones till he bleeds to death and frees himself by committing suicide.

But he waits patiently for death, and death may delay its coming for ten or twenty years. His remembrance of the world and life outside his cell becomes fainter and fainter; he has long forgotten the dawn in the east and the golden clouds of sunset; and when he looks up his dimmed eyes perceive no stars twinkling in the night, only the black ceiling of his cave. At last, however, after long years have passed in the darkness, suddenly a great brilliancy flashes out—that is, when Death comes, takes him by the hand, and leads him out. And Death has not to wait, entreat, and coax, for the lama has waited and longed for his welcome and only guest and deliverer. If he has had his mind still clear, he has taken the little wooden stand under his arms so that he may die in the same sacred position in which Buddha is represented in all the thousands of statues and pictures which have come under our notice in our wanderings through the cloister temples of Tibet.

When the tsamba bowl, which has been filled daily for so many long years, remains at last untouched and the six days have expired, the cave is opened and the abbot of the monastery sits down beside the deceased and prays for him, while all the other monks pray in the dukang hall for five or six days together. Then the body is wrapped in a white garment, a covering called ringa is placed on his head, and he is burned on a pyre. The ashes are collected, kneaded together with clay, and moulded into a small pyramid, which is deposited in a chhorten.

The Linga monks said that an ordinary lama, when he dies, is cut in pieces and abandoned to the birds. This process is performed here by five lamas, who, though they belong to the monastery, attend the service in the dukang, and drink tea with the other monks, are still considered unclean, and may not eat with the other brethren. Also when nomads die in the neighbourhood, their services are required, but then the relatives are bound to provide them with horses and to undertake that the property of the deceased shall pass into the possession of the monastery.

For days and weeks I could not drive away the picture I had formed in my mind of the Lama Rinpoche, before whose cell we had stood and talked. And still less could I forget his predecessor, who had lived there forty years. I fancied I could hear the conch which summoned the monks to the funeral mass of the departed. I pictured to myself the scene in the cave where the lama, crouching in rags on the floor, stretches out his withered hands to Death, who, kindly smiling like the skull masks in the temples, gives him one hand while he holds a brightly burning lamp in the other. The features of the monk are transfigured in a reflexion of Nirvana, and forgetting the “Om mani padme hum” that for tens of years has reverberated from the walls of his den, he raises, as the trumpet blasts sound out from the temple roof, a song of victory, which calls to mind the following strophe from the myths of another people (Frithiof’s Saga, Blackley’s translation):

CHAPTER XXXVI

OVER THE CHANG-LA-POD-LA

We had stayed three days near the monastery Linga, when we went on north-westwards on April 17 up the narrow My-chu valley, in which the volume of water was now considerably diminished. Space does not permit me to describe in detail this wonderful road and its wild beauty. From the expansion of the valley at Linga routes run eastwards and westwards into the mountains, with branches to numerous villages, of which I noted down the names and approximate positions. The traffic is now much less, but still numerous manis and other religious symbols stand beside the solitary path.

We ride along the steep slopes of the right bank; below us the river forms rapids, and the way is dangerous, especially with a horse that is not sure on its feet. Robert’s small bay filly stumbled and fell, so that the rider was thrown headlong to the ground. Had he rolled down the slope he would have been lost; but fortunately he fell towards the mountain.

We encamped in the village Langmar, consisting of a few scattered houses, at the entrance of the small side valley Langmar-pu.

We still have hired horses, and now yaks also, and the caravan is divided into the same detachments as before. Sonam Tsering and Guffaru command their sections. Tsering’s party sets out last and is the last to come to rest, and Muhamed Isa supervises the whole. In the evening he is massaged by two men selected for the purpose, of whom Rehim Ali is one. There is still chang, the harmless, but still intoxicating, beer. Among the singers at the camp-fires, Tsering, as usual, deserves the first prize. He gives me no end of amusement; he sings like a cow, or at best like a burst temple drum. His voice cracks continually, and he loses the time and the melody without being the least put out. But he considers his singing very fine, and the others take pleasure in it; one can tell from a distance that the tears are coming into his eyes. Sometimes he pauses to explain the subject of the ballad and take a drink, and then he goes on again. When all the others are asleep, and all is so quiet in the camp that the rushing of the stream is audible and from time to time the bark of a dog, Tsering’s rough voice trilling harshly still resounds among the mountains.

Next day we draw near to the main crest of the Trans-Himalaya, for to my great surprise and delight we have been conducted in this direction. Granite still predominates, and in it erosion has excavated the wild forms of the valleys; the way is tolerably good, but very stony; small strips of ice lie along both banks of the stream, within which the bright green water fills the valley with the roar of its impetuosity. The dark green of a kind of juniper called pama is a relief to the eyes, which otherwise perceive nothing but grey slopes of detritus.

The river here is named Langmar-tsangpo, but it is really only the upper course of the My-chu. It is formed by the Ke-tsangpo coming from the north and the Govo-tsangpo from the west. The former, called in its upper course Ogorung-tsangpo, descends from the main watershed of the Trans-Himalaya, and must therefore be considered the main stream. I was told that its source may be reached in a day and a half from the junction of the valleys. On the left bank of the Govo a thicket of pama shrubs grows, and a safe bridge of three arches spans the river. Over this bridge runs the important trade route to Tok-jalung which I have mentioned above. Herds of yaks and flocks of sheep graze on the slopes, and circular penfolds remind us of our life in the Chang-tang. A little farther up we cross the Govo, which is half frozen over; springs and brooks from the side valleys adorn the scene with cascades of ice. The river is said to be here so swollen in summer that it cannot be crossed at any point. To the north and south snowy mountains are visible.

In the village of Govo, consisting of seven stone houses, barley is cultivated and yields a moderate crop; but the inhabitants are not dependent on the harvest, for they also possess sheep, goats, and yaks, with which they migrate northwards in summer. Govo is the last village where agriculture is pursued, so we here find ourselves on the boundary between tillage and grazing, and also between stone houses and black tents (Illust. 182).

We have, then, still time to look into an ordinary Tibetan stone hut belonging to a family in comfortable circumstances. The walls are built of untrimmed bare stones, but the crevices are stopped with earth to keep out the wind. Through a labyrinth of walls and over round stones where the tripping foot seldom touches the ground we come to two yards where goats and calves are kept. In a third is a loom, at which a half-naked coppery-brown woman is working, and in a fourth sits an old man engaged in cutting up pama shrubs.

From this yard we entered a half-dark room, with a floor of mud, and two openings in the roof, through which the smoke escapes and the daylight enters. The roof consists of beams overlaid with a thatch of brushwood, which is covered all over with soil and flat stones—it must be nice and dry when it rains. There sat an elderly woman telling off her manis on a rosary of porcelain beads.

The next room is the kitchen, the general living-room and the principal apartment of the house. At a projecting wall stands the stone cooking-range with round black-edged holes for saucepans and teapots of baked clay. A large earthen pot, standing on the fire, contains barley, which is eaten parched; a stick with a stiff piece of leather at the end is twirled round in the barley between the palms so that it may be roasted equally. It tastes delicious.

I went about, turned over all the household utensils and made an inventory, and not in Swedish only, but also in Tibetan. There were many different vessels of iron, clay, and wood for all kinds of purposes, a large wooden ladle, a tea sieve of sheet-iron, an iron spoon, an ash shovel, iron fire-tongs, and a thing called a thagma, an iron blade fitted into a piece of wood, something like a closed pocket-knife, and used to dress newly woven material. A large clay jug was filled with chang. A small cubical vessel divided into four by small cross pieces of wood is used to measure corn. Brick-tea is pulverized with a stone shaped like a cucumber in a deep wooden cup. A knife-blade with a haft at either end is used in preparing and tawing hides. Under one of the smoke vents stood a small hearth for an open fire with an iron tripod. A large leathern sack was filled with tsamba, and two sheep’s stomachs held fat and butter. On a rack a quantity of sheep’s trotters, dusty and dirty, were arranged; when they are several months old they are used to make soup, which is thickened with tsamba. Tea, salt, and tobacco are kept in large and small bags.

We saw likewise all kinds of religious objects, votive bowls, joss-sticks, and small image cases; also bales of home-woven textiles, coloured ribands for sewing on skin coats and boots, knives, hatchets, sabres and spears, which, we were told, are for fighting thieves and robbers; a pair of bellows, two sacks of dry dung for fuel, baskets, hand-mills for grinding barley, consisting of two round flat stones with a handle on the upper one; lastly, an oil-lamp and an oil-can, and a cylindrical tub with iron hoops full of water. In a corner lay heaps of skins and garments, and against the wall were two sleeping-places still in disorder.

In another store-room there were provisions in sacks, barley, green fodder, peas, and great joints of meat. Here three young women and a troop of children had taken refuge; we left them room to escape, and they ran away screaming loudly as if all the knives in the house were at their throats. In the room were balances for weighing, consisting of a rounded staff with a stone weight at one end and a dried yak hide at the other. Behind a partition straw was kept. There are high inconvenient thresholds between the rooms, and the usual bundles of rods on the roof to protect the house from evil spirits.

After this expedition we inspected the tents of our escort, where a fire was burning in a broken clay pot, and a skillet stood over it on a tripod. The smoke escapes through the long slit between the two halves of which the tent is composed. The owners of the tent were writing their report to the authorities in Shigatse, informing them that we were on the right road. At the same time they were eating their dinner of mutton, a year old, dry and hard; it must not come near the fire. One of them cut it into strips and distributed it among his comrades. He had been for twenty years a lama in the monastery Lung-ganden in Tong, but a few years before had been ejected from the confraternity because he had fallen in love with a woman. He spoke of it himself, so it was doubtless true.

Robert’s bay horse was reported dead on the morning of April 20. His late tumble now seemed to us like an omen; though fat and sleek, he died suddenly about midnight. We now ride on again towards higher regions over uncomfortable blocks of stone, but the valley becomes more open and the relative heights diminish. Though the little that is left of the stream still swirls and foams, the ice becomes thicker, and at last covers almost all the bed, and the water is heard rushing and murmuring under it. Juicy moss skirts the banks, the view becomes more extensive, and the whole character of the landscape becomes alpine. We saw ten men with guns in a sheepfold, carrying gun-rests with yellow and red pennants on one of the prongs; perhaps they were highway robbers. Dark clouds sweep over the ridges, and in a minute we are in the midst of icy-cold drifting snow, but it does not last long.

The last bit of road was awful, nothing but boulders and débris, which we could sometimes avoid by riding over the ice of the river. The camping-ground was called Chomo-sumdo, a valley fork in a desolate region, but the escort had seen that some straw and barley were brought up on yaks for our horses.

From here we had to ride on the ice, smooth and firm after 27 degrees of frost in the night. The neighbourhood is not, however, uninhabited, for yaks and sheep were seen grazing in many places, belonging to nomads migrating northwards or merchants coming from Tok-jalung. At two black tents the people were packing up for the day’s march; they had goats, with strips of red cloth bound round the ears.

A little farther up is a precipitous rock on the right side of the valley, and two caves open their black mouths in the wall. The lower one (Illust. 190) is the entrance to a passage leading to the upper, where a famous hermit has fixed his solitary abode. The upper opening has a partly natural balcony decorated with streamer-poles and ribands. Below the lower stand mani cairns, long garlands of string with coloured prayer-strips, a prayer-mast, and a metal idol in a niche of the rock.

We tethered our horses at the edge of the ice and went up to the lower grotto. Here two young nuns from Kirong (on the border of Nepal) met us, and two mendicant monks from Nepal, one of whom spoke Hindustani, so that Robert could converse with him. The nuns were pretty, well-grown, sun-burnt, and somewhat like gypsies; their large black eyes had the shimmer of velvet, and their black hair was parted on the forehead and fell in luxuriant waves over their shoulders; they were clothed in red rags and wore Tibetan boots adorned with red ribands. They spoke cheerfully and pleasantly in strikingly soft, extremely sympathetic voices, and were not in the least timid. Their simple dwelling, which we saw, was in the great entrance of the grotto, under a smoke-blackened vault, surrounded by a small wall and a palisade of pama branches, and partly hung with cloth. A sleeping-place was made of rugs of interwoven strips of cloth, and a tea-kettle was boiling on the fire. One of the men had a thick pigtail and a red lama frock; the other wore a sheepskin, and had not had his hair cut in the present, twentieth, century. The dwelling proper was situated in a higher part of the cavern.

All four had come in autumn, and were waiting for the warmer season to proceed to Lhasa, and return thence home again. In the meantime they voluntarily waited on the two holy hermits sojourning in this mountain, and thereby earned their living and gained merit, according to the ideas of their order. When they go off again on their wanderings, other serving brethren and sisters will be found ready to take their place.

A winding staircase on the left, partly natural and partly constructed of flagstones, leads to the upper regions of the cavern. At first it is dark, but becomes lighter as we approach a loophole in the rock. Here and there are streamer-poles, and the holy syllables are incised. From the loophole the staircase turns steeply to the right; if we slipped on the smooth stone we should tumble down right into the nuns’ kitchen, which from here looks like the bottom of a well. The passage ends at a point where a small stone staircase goes up to a trap-door covered with a slab. Pushing aside the slab, one reaches the larger grotto chamber of which we had seen the opening from the valley. But the serving brothers and sisters would not take us so high.

In this upper grotto, Choma-taka, the 100-years-old hermit, Gunsang Ngurbu, of high repute in all the country for his holiness, has dwelt for seven years. Gunsang means hermit, and Ngurbu is a very common name signifying precious stone. Every seventh day his attendants place tsamba, water, tea, and fuel on the steps under the trap-door, and these things are taken in by the old man, who may not speak with men, but only with the gods. Through a hole under the slab I caught sight of a chhorten constructed of stones and mud, and some painted pictures of gods on the wall of the grotto. Behind the chhorten, and unfortunately out of sight, the old man sat in a niche in the wall, crouching down and saying his prayers; now and then he blows a shell horn.

I wished to push aside the shutter and mount into the upper grotto, but the consciences of my companions would not permit such a thing for all the money in the world. It would disturb the old man in his meditations, and interrupt the period of his seclusion, and, moreover, the old man would throw stones at us. The life of the hermit Ngurbu must be idyllic compared to that of the immured Linga monks, for he sees the valley, the sun, the whirling snow, and the stars sparkling in the sky; but he must suffer from ennui. In another grotto, side by side with Ngurbu’s, lives another hermit, but the two have never met and know nothing of one another. They may eat no meat, only tsamba and tea, and they receive these from the neighbouring nomads and the travellers passing along the road.

After this digression we cross the ice of the river again and pass up over the ever-present detritus. Before us is the flattish saddle of the Chang-la-Pod-la. We accomplish the ascent with great effort, the icy wind blowing right in our faces. I cannot commence my observations at the cairn till I have warmed my hands over a dung fire. The view is limited, flat, and of little use for orientation. However, towards the way we have come, we can see the deeply eroded valleys, and we seem to be higher than the ridges enclosing them. The height is 18,284 feet. Chang signifies north, north country; Pod or Pö, Tibet, i.e. Tibet proper, chiefly inhabited by a settled population. Chang-la-Pod-la is, then, the pass between the northern tableland of the nomads and the country to the south having drainage to the sea. It is this property of a boundary between these two regions which renders the Trans-Himalaya of such prime importance, and therefore there are many passes called Chang-la-Pod-la. Often and often I was told that a pass, whatever might be its especial name, was a Chang-la-Pod-la when it lay on the watershed between the inland drainage of the north and the river basin of the Tsangpo in the south. I had then crossed the Trans-Himalaya a second time by a pass lying 44 miles to the west of the Sela-la, and had been able to ascertain that the huge range of the Nien-chen-tang-la extends thus far. It was still more my earnest desire to follow it step by step to the west.

After we had encamped on the pass, where the thermometer fell at night to −9½°, we rode on April 22 slowly down the valley of the Shak-chu river, which gradually becomes broader, and is begirt by flat rounded mountains, in which rock in situ seldom occurs. We have passed from the maze of mountains intersected by the affluents of the My-chu, abundantly fed by the rains, on to the wide plains of the plateau country, and notice again that the Trans-Himalaya is also an extraordinarily important climatological boundary.

The Lapsen-Tari is a heap of clods with a sheaf of rods stuck in the middle, from which streamer strings are carried to other rods. From this point there is a fine view over the plateau and its wreath of mountains. To the north, 55° west, we see the Targo-gangri again, but more majestic, more isolated, and more dominant than from the Ngangtse-tso, where, shrouded in clouds and surrounded by other mountains, it was less conspicuous.

Just at the mound we passed the last corner which obscured the view, and suddenly the whole grand mountain appeared in its dazzling whiteness, shining like a lighthouse over the sea of the plateau, in a mantle of firn fields and blue glistening ice, and rising bold and sharply against the sky of purest azure blue. The mound is therefore placed where the traveller coming from Shigatse first comes in sight of the holy mountain. Our guides bared their heads and murmured prayers. Two pilgrims, whom we had seen at the grotto of the hermits, lighted a fire and threw into it a scented powder, an offering of incense to the gods of Targo-gangri. South and south-west runs a lofty range, of uniform height, with patches of snow glittering in the sun on its brownish-purple summit—another part of the Trans-Himalaya.

As we sat here a trading caravan came along the road to Penla-buk, which lies on the west side of the Dangra-yum-tso, and is a rendezvous for gold-prospectors and wool-dealers. Our tents formed a little village on the Kyangdam plain, where wild asses abound, and some sixty nomads of the neighbourhood encamped around it.

In the evening the escort from Ghe presented themselves to inform me that as we were now in the Largep district, subject to the Labrang, they would return home and consign us to a new guard. The latter consisted of five men far advanced in life. Their leader was a small grey-headed man with trembling hands and very indistinct enunciation. When the Ghe men, who longed to return to their warmer villages, had gone off next morning in spite of a violent storm, I had a serious talk with the new men. They intended to lead us over the pass Sha-la (Trans-Himalaya) in the south-west, where the Targo-tsangpo rises, on the banks of which we had passed the day. According to Nain Sing’s map this river flows round the east side of Targo-gangri, and then enters the Dangra-tso, as the holy lake is called here. But Nain Sing was never there, and I wished to gain an insight into the geography of the country. So we came to an agreement that we should travel north-westwards; and I pointed out to the men that Raga-tasam was put down in our passport as the next place; that two roads led thither, one over the Sha-la, the other deviating northwards to the Targo-gangri, and that I had chosen the latter. The passport prohibited us from visiting Lhasa, Gyangtse, and the monastery Sekiya-gompa, but contained not a single word about the road to the Dangra-yum-tso. They ought then to comply with my wishes. The old man hesitated, pondered awhile, and summoned his followers to a council. His tent was soon full of black, bare-headed men in grey sheepskins. Then the consultation was adjourned to Muhamed Isa’s tent. After some consideration they agreed to my proposals, on the condition that I should pay them a whole tenga per day for each yak instead of half a tenga. I rejoiced at the hope of seeing the holy mountain coming closer and closer, and its finer details becoming more conspicuous, of beholding it in cloud and sunshine, disappearing behind the hills and peeping out again like a man-of-war in a rough sea with high white waves round the bow, or, more correctly, like a ship under full sail on the sea of the plateau. Of course I exposed myself to annoyances by ignoring the passport, but geographical discoveries were concerned and all considerations must be set aside.

On Vega day, April 24, we had a strong wind in our faces, it was cold, and Targo-gangri partly disappeared behind the clouds. Escorted by the old gentleman and four horsemen who were as much alike as if they had been cast in the same mould, and who had all matchlocks on their backs, I rode along the bank of the Targo-tsangpo in the contracting valley which slopes with an extremely gentle gradient, imperceptible to the eye, to the lake. At last the valley becomes so narrow that the ice fills all its bottom. The road therefore leaves the river on the left, and passes over flat hills, among which we cross a succession of small affluents. Black tents, tame yaks grazing, stone folds for sheep, wild asses, and millions of field mice recall to mind the Chang-tang. The wild yak, however, does not occur in this country. The feathered kingdom is represented by ravens, wild ducks, and occasionally a small bird. When we came to the Bumnak-chu, a right-hand tributary of the Targo-tsangpo, a large number of men came to meet us, saluting with the tongue, and gazing at us cheerfully and good-temperedly with their long black unkempt hair, their small grey skins, and their torn boots.

On April 25 we rode over the Ting-la pass; at its foot is a mani in good preservation, with a yak skull as ornament, a form of prayer being incised in the frontal bone between the horns. From the top of the pass Targo-gangri is seen expanded into a row of peaks covered with snow. The whole region is like a sea with a strong swell on, and the Targo-gangri is as white foaming surf on the coast. A little later the summits of the mass stood clearly out white on a background of bluish-black clouds; the highest two, twin peaks, had the form of a Tibetan tent on two poles.

Our camp in the Kokbo valley contained not fewer than eleven tents, for now we had about forty companions of all ages, and at least a hundred yaks. The loads were transferred to other yaks on the march to spare the animals. When the caravan moves over the rounded hills it is like a nomad tribe on the march. Most of our Tibetans ride yaks or horses.

We had made a short march, and plenty of time was left for me to go about, make a visit to each tent, and see how the men were getting on. They were all drinking tea and eating tsamba, their greatest pleasure in life. The dung fire burns in the middle, and the form of the tent certainly is the cause of the draught which prevents smoke from collecting inside. Round about stand kettles, teapots, and wooden cups. A huge quantity of provisions lies at the sides. Saddles and harness are deposited in a row before the tent. When I enter, all rise, but I beg them to sit down again and go on eating, while I take a seat on a barley sack at the door of the tent. All have the right arm bare, and many both arms; when they let their sheepskins fall down their backs the whole body is naked down to the waist. They are copper-brown and covered with a layer of dirt, but well-grown, powerful, manly, and in good proportion. The cook of the tent community pours out tea for all, and then each one brings out his own bag and takes out a pinch of tsamba to sprinkle into his tea. They eat meat either raw or boiled in a pot. They are all quiet and orderly, no angry words are heard, no quarrelling and shouting, they are all the best of friends, and make themselves comfortable after their day’s march, talking and laughing together. Their wigs are dust-traps and make them look like Indians. Most of them wear a pigtail, consisting mostly of plaited threads with white bone rings and small silver image boxes which have a couple of turquoises inlaid in the lid. Some have the pigtail wound round the head, forming a singular crown, the diadem of the wilderness.

In another tent the dinner was finished and the “covers” were empty. There a man sat with an awl, cobbling a torn boot; another sewed the girths of his saddle on firmly; and a third lay on his back, with legs crossed and an arm supporting his head, and took his after-dinner nap. Seen from above he makes a very absurd figure with his huge nostrils, into which mice might easily walk in mistake for their holes. A smirking youth is smoking his pipe, while his neighbour busily and carefully searches for suspected lodgers in his sheepskin.

I drew several of them without exciting the least uneasiness; on the contrary, they made a joke of the sitting, and laughed heartily when they saw their counterfeits, which they embellished with prints of their buttery fingers on the margin. They asked me why I drew them, and for what purpose I wished to know their names and ages. They were all sympathetic, polite, and friendly, and I enjoyed their society (Illusts. 193, 194).

A begging lama, too, looked in; he was on the way to Kailas, and was quickly sketched, to the intense amusement of the other men. He bore a lance with a black tassel and red strips, a timbrel, an antelope horn to protect himself against snappy dogs, and a trombone of human bone, which he set in a corner of his mouth when he blew it. It caused him much amusement to be the object of universal attention, and he took advantage of it to make acquaintance with the nomads with a view to an appeal to their liberality (Illust. 195).

CHAPTER XXXVII

TARGO-GANGRI AND THE SHURU-TSO

Hitherto we had experienced no difficulties, but at Kokbo the state of affairs seemed disquieting. Our old man informed me that he had sent a message to the nomads at the Targo-gangri mountain, asking them to hold yaks in readiness. They had answered that they could not think of serving a European without express orders, and that they would resort to force if our present guards led us to the lake. The old man, however, was not put out, but believed that he could soon bring them to their senses.

On April 26 we march north-westwards in a sharp wind over the pass Tarbung-la. The sacred mountain exhibits all the beauty of its sixteen peaks, and north, 33° west, is seen the gap where we expect to find the Dangra-yum-tso. The view is of immense extent. The valley widens out and passes into that of the Targo-tsangpo. Four antelopes spring lightly over the slopes; black tents are not to be seen.

When we again reach more open ground, one of the most magnificent views I have seen in this part of Tibet opens out to the west-south-west, a gigantic range of uniform height, with snow-covered pinnacles and short glaciers between, which is scarcely inferior to Targo-gangri in imposing beauty and massiveness. The chain is bluish black below the snowy points; at its foot lies a lake unknown to us, the Shuru-tso. The journey to the Ngangtse-tso north-north-east by the way of the Shangbuk-la pass is reckoned as only three days’ march. On the eastern flank of Targo-gangri five glaciers are deeply embedded, while to the east of the mountain the flat open valley of the Targo-tsangpo comes into sight, which we gradually approach, passing over five clearly defined terraces, relics of a time when the Dangra-yum-tso was much larger than now. Two wolves make off in front of us, and the old man gallops after them, but turns back when they stop as if to wait for him. “If I had had a knife or a gun,” he says, “I would have killed them both.”

At length we descend to the valley of the Targo-tsangpo down a bold terrace with two ledges, and here the river is divided into several arms, and wild ducks and geese swarm. Brushwood grows on the banks. On the right bank lies our camp, No. 150, not far from the foot of the majestic Targo-gangri (Illust. 198).

Thus far we were to come, but no farther. Here a troop of twenty horsemen armed to the teeth awaited us, who had been sent by the Governor of Naktsang from Shansa-dzong, with orders to stop us “in case we should attempt to advance to the holy lake.” This time they had kept a sharper watch, and had anticipated that I would take all kinds of liberties. They had left Shansa-dzong fifteen days before, and had been camping here three days, awaiting our arrival. If we had hurried we should have been before them again. One of the two leaders was the same Lundup Tsering who, as he told me himself, had stopped Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, and had been in January with Hlaje Tsering at the Ngangste-tso. He informed me that Hlaje Tsering was still in office, but had had much trouble because of us, and had been obliged to pay a fine of sixty yambaus (about £675) to the Devashung. When I remarked that Hlaje Tsering had told me himself that he was so poor that he had nothing left to lose, Lundup answered that he had extorted the money from his subordinates. All, too, who had sold us yaks and served us as guides had been heavily fined. The next European who attempted to get through without a passport would have no end of difficulties to contend with (Illust. 200).

Lundup pointed to a red granite promontory, 200 yards north of our camp, and said: “There is the boundary between the Labrang (Tashi-lunpo) and Naktsang (Lhasa). So far we can let you go, but not a step farther; if you attempt it, we have orders to fire on you.”

They read the passport from Shigatse, and affirmed that the words therein, “on the direct way to Ladak,” did not mean that we had permission to make all sorts of detours, and, above all, we might not go to the Dangra-yum-tso, which is holy and is in the territory of Lhasa. Gaw Daloi had given orders that he should be informed daily which way we were travelling. If they did not obey this order they would lose their heads. It was evident, then, that I should have to give up the Dangra-yum-tso for the third time, and just when I was only two short days’ march from it.

The outline of the mountain stood out sharp and white in the moonshine against the blue-black starry sky. The next day there was a storm, and not even the foot of Targo-gangri was visible, much less the icy-cold heights where the winds sing their heavenly choruses among the firn fields. In the evening, however, when the weather had cleared, the whole mass stood clearly out, covered with freshly fallen snow.

Again we held a long palaver with the horsemen from Naktsang. I told them that I would not leave this camp till I had at least seen the lake from a distance. To my delight they replied that though they were obliged, much against their inclination, to cause me the disappointment of not visiting the lake, they would not prevent me from seeing it from a distance, but that they would keep a good watch lest I should ride off behind yonder red mountain to the north.

They had scarcely gone when our old Kyangdam guide came to complain that the horsemen from Naktsang had threatened his life because he had brought me here. I sent for the Naktsang men again and impressed on them strongly that they had no cause of complaint against my escort, for it was entirely my fault that we were here. They promised that they would not again treat the Kyangdam men harshly, as they had most fortunately caught me just at the right moment. The Kyangdam men could not thank me enough for restoring peace, and their joy was still greater when I presented the whole party with money to supplement their scanty store of provisions. They gave vent to their delight by performing games, dances, and wrestling bouts in front of my tent, and their happy laughter and shouts were echoed till late in the night from the mountains.

Then came twelve more soldiers from Naktsang with fresh orders that we were under no circumstances to be allowed to proceed farther northwards. But all were friendly and polite; we joked and laughed together, and were the best of friends. It is singular that they never lose their patience, though I am always causing them worry, perplexity, and troublesome journeys.

The chief of Largep was more unyielding than our old friends the Naktsang gentlemen. He would not let me climb the red mountain, but insisted that we should leave the district next day and travel straight to Raga-tasam. However, I snubbed him, demanding how he, a small chieftain in the mountains, could dare to speak so peremptorily. Even the Chinese in Lhasa, I said, had treated us pleasantly and had left us the fullest freedom. I would not leave the spot until I had seen the lake. I threatened to tear the Shigatse passport in pieces, and send off at once a courier to Tang Darin and Lien Darin, and wait for their answer at the foot of Targo-gangri. Then the chief became embarrassed, got up in silence, and went away with the others. But they were with me again in the evening, and with a humble smile they said that I might ride up the red mountain if I would promise not to go to the shore of the lake.

A thin veil of mist lay over the country all day long. But when the sun set, the western sky glowed with purple flames, and the cold glaciers and snowfields were thrown up by a background of fire.

At last, on April 29, we take to the road and ride up the affluent Chuma, flowing down from the right and called in its upper course Nagma-tsangpo. We climb higher and higher up regularly curved lake terraces; the view widens out the nearer we approach the summit, where the Ladakis are waiting for us with a fire. The southern basin of the Dangra-yum-tso was clearly visible as a bluish sabre-blade, and the valley of the Targo-tsangpo widens out like a trumpet to the broad plain beside the shore. It was the easier to trace the course of the river to the neighbourhood of the lake because it was marked all along by white glistening ice flakes and dark spots where bushes grow. At the end of July the river is said to rise so high that it cannot be crossed. So when letters have to be delivered to nomads on the eastern foot of the mountain they are weighted with a stone and thrown across a narrow part of the stream.

The water of the lake is said to be as salt as that of the Ngangtse-tso, and is not fit for drinking; but nevertheless pilgrims drink it, because it is holy. At this time the winter ice was breaking up, and long sheets of ice lay only at the shore. In contrast to most other lakes of Tibet, the Dangra-yum-tso runs north and south, and it narrows in the middle, just as Nain Sing has drawn it on his map; but he has made the lake a little too large, and has especially exaggerated the dimensions of the southern basin. A horseman can travel round the lake in five ordinary or seven short days’ journey; the pilgrim road closely follows the lake shore. The pilgrims always make the circuit of the lake in the direction of the hands of a watch, if they are orthodox; but if they belong to the Pembo sect, like the monks of the Sershik-gompa, they begin their march in the opposite direction. Most of them come in late summer or autumn. I was told that the pilgrimage round the lake, which of course must be made on foot, was in honour of Padma Sambhava, the saint who came to Tibet in the year 747, became the founder of Lamaism, and enjoys almost as great a reputation as Buddha himself. He is called in Tibet Lopön Rinpoche, and his image is generally found in the temples.

Sershik-gompa, of which we had frequently heard, and which Nain Sing names Sasik Gombas on his map, stands on an even slope at the eastern foot of the mountain. The monastery is under the Devashung, and has twenty Pembo brethren and an abbot named Tibha. Some of the monks are said to be well off, but on the whole the convent is not rich; it is supported by nomads in Naktsang, Largep, and Sershik. The monastery is constructed chiefly of stone, but it also contains timber transported hither from the Shang valley. There is a dukang and a number of small images of gods. The Targo-gangri massive can also be travelled round, and only one pass has to be crossed, namely the Barong-la (or Parung), which lies between Targo-gangri and the mighty range on the west of the Shuru-tso.

The short, lofty, meridional range which is called Targo-gangri, and is rather to be considered an isolated massive, ends in the north not far from the lake, the flanks of the last peak descending gently to its flat plain. Nain Sing calls the massive Targot-la Snowy Peaks, and the district to the south of the mountain Tárgot Lhágeb (Largep). The river is marked Targot Sangpo on his map. His Siru Cho to the east of the lake is known to no one here, and his Mun Cho Lakes marked to the south of it actually lie to the west of the lake. His representation of the mountains to the south of the lake is confused and fanciful. Some nomads named the holy mountain Chang-targo-ri.

On the way back I took levels, assisted by Robert, and found that the highest recognizable terrace lay 292 feet above the level of the river. The Targo-tsangpo is here certainly not more than 6½ feet higher than the surface of the lake. As the Dangra-yum-tso is surrounded, particularly on the south, by rather low, flat land, the lake must formerly have been of very large extent. At that time the Targo-gangri skirted the western shore as a peninsula.

In the night there was a noise like an avalanche falling; it became feebler and died away. The horses and yaks of the Tibetans, frightened by something or other, had stormed the detritus slope of the terrace. Half an hour later I heard whistling and shouting; the men were coming back with the runaways.

Before we took leave of our troublesome friends they were photographed on horseback (Illust. 201). They all wore roomy, dark cerise-coloured mantles, and, unlike the bare-headed Largep men, a bandage round the head, in many cases drawn through silver rings like bangles. One had a tall white hat like a truncated cone, with a flat brim, a head-covering I remembered seeing in Nakchu. Their guns, with the military pennants on the forks, they had slung over their shoulders, and their sabres stuck out horizontally from their girdles in silver-bound scabbards decorated with three pieces of imitation coral. Over the left shoulder some carried a whole bandolier of gao cases with glass fronts, through which were visible the little innocent gods which bring their wearers good fortune on their journey. Their fat little horses stamped and snorted, longing for their old well-known pastures on the shores of the Kyaring-tso. They also were decked with needlessly heavy but dainty ornaments. The white horses with red riders on their backs made a particularly striking picture. It was a varied scene in the blazing sunshine, with the snowy summits of Targo-gangri as a background and Nain Sing’s lake to the north. I begged them to greet Hlaje Tsering heartily from me, and tell him that I hoped to see him again.

And then they struck their heels into their horses, drew together into close order, and trotted gaily up to the level surfaces of the river terraces. Captivated by the appearance of the departing troop I ran after it, and watched the dark column grow smaller at the red spur, where the old shore lines seemed to run together. Singular people! They rise like goblins from the depths of their valleys, they come one knows not whence, they, like us, visit for a few short days the foot of the snowy mountain, and then they vanish again like a whirlwind in the dust of the horses’ hoofs and beyond the mysterious horizon.

We, too, set out, and I left the Dangra-yum-tso to its fate, the dark-blue waters to the blustering storm and the song of the rising waves, and the eternal snowfields to the whisper of the winds. May the changing colours of the seasons, the beauty of atmospheric effects of light and shade, gold, purple, and grey, pass over Padma Sambhava’s lake amidst rain and sunshine, as already for untold thousands of years, and the steps of believing, yearning pilgrims draw a chain around its shores.

Accompanied by Robert and our aged guide, I rode across the river, which carries about 140 cubic feet of water, and up to a spur of Targo-gangri in order to procure a rock specimen. One glacier tongue after another of the long series on the east side of the mountain passes out of sight, and now the gap disappears through which we had seen a corner of the lake, and far away to the north on its other side the outlines of light-blue mountains.

Six hundred sheep were grazing on a slope without shepherds. Now and then a hare was started in the thick tufts of steppe grass. From the screes on our right was heard the pleasant chirp of partridges. When we were far away two shepherds came up out of a gorge and drove the sheep down to the river. At the lower end of the moraine of a glacier stood a solitary tent. I asked our old man what the spot was called, but he swore by three different gods that he had no notion. The most southern outskirt of Targo-gangri hid the rest of the range, but before we reached camp No. 151 it appeared again foreshortened. This camp stood on the left bank of the river.

May 1. Spring is come; we have, indeed, had as much as 29 degrees of frost during the preceding nights, but the days are fine and clear, and it is never as trying as in the Chang-tang, even riding against the wind. At camp No. 150 we had been at a height of 15,446 feet; now we go slowly down, following the river at first, but leaving it on the left when we see it emerge from the mountains as through a gate. Over a singularly uniform and continuous plain without fissures or undulations we now approach in a south-westerly direction the threshold which separates the Shuru-tso from the Dangra-yum-tso. On the south-west side of Tangro-gangri appear six glaciers, much smaller than those on the north and east, and rather to be regarded as spurs and corners of the ice mantle which covers the higher regions of the massive. The Shuru-tso is seen as a fine blue line. We approach its shore and find that the lake is completely frozen over. We make a halt to photograph and to draw a panorama. Our old man smokes a pipe, and Robert and Tashi try which can snore loudest. When I am ready we sneak off quietly from the two sleepers. Tashi is the first to awake, understands the joke, and also sneaks off. At last Robert awakes and finds himself alone, but he soon overtakes us on his mule.

Now we have the lake close on our right. To the south rise grand mountains, one of the loftiest chains of the Trans-Himalaya, raven black beneath the sun, but the firn-fields glitter with a metallic lustre. Considerable terraces skirt the bank, and the valleys running down from the east to the lake cut through them, forming hollow ways in which a solitary tent stands here and there guarded by a savage dog. We encamp on the terrace above the Parva valley, our eight black tents contrasting strongly with the yellow soil (15,594 feet). Our old Tibetans from Kyangdam now bid us farewell and receive double payment as a present. In front of us are the congealed waters of the Shuru-tso, longing to be released by the warm spring winds; to the south rises the Do-tsengkan, a mighty elevation clothed in eternal snow; in the south-west the sun sinks behind the huge crest of the mountains and the shadows pass silently across the ice. Soon the evening red lingers only on the peaks of Targo-gangri and Do-tsengkan, and then another night falls over the earth. It is a pity that the Tibetans do not understand the relations of the sun and the planets, for they might regard the solar system as a unique immeasurable prayer-mill revolving in space to the glory of the gods. In the darkness the lofty mountains to the north-west are misty and indistinct, but when the moon rises they and the lake are illuminated alike and seem to be connected. From our terrace we seem to have a bottomless abyss below us.

On May 2 we ride southwards along the shore (Illust. 205). Like the Dangra-yum-tso, the Shuru-tso runs almost north and south, lying in a longitudinal valley which has this direction, so unusual in Tibet. There is open water along the bank, and the waves splash against the edge of the porous ice, on which wild ducks sit, often in long rows. Owing to the swell the water on the bank is black with decayed algæ and rotting water-weeds, in which wild geese cackle and scream. As we come to the regularly curved southern shore of the lake, with its bank of sand, we see the well-known signs of a storm on the plain before us, white dust swirls, stirred up in spirals from the ground by the wind, like the smoke of a shot. After a time we find ourselves in the path of the storm—it will not need many such storms to break up the whole lake and drive its loosened ice-sheets to the eastern bank. We ride across the river Kyangdam-tsangpo, which comes from the Trans-Himalaya, and bivouac on its western terrace (15,548 feet). Here we have the whole lake in front of us to the north, and behind it Targo-gangri, now smaller again.

Here our attendants were changed. The Largep chief, who had been so overbearing at first, was as meek as a lamb at the moment of parting, and gave me a kadakh, a sheep, and four skins of butter. Every morning when the caravan sets out Ishe comes to my tent to fetch my two puppies; Muhamed Isa has the third, which he means to train up to be a wonderful animal, and the fourth has been consigned to Sonam Tsering. They have grown a deal already, and howl and bite each other on the march, when they ride in a basket on the back of a mule. They are graceful and playful, and give me great amusement with their tricks.

From the little pass Dunka-la we had a grand and instructive view over the great Shuru-tso, which is of a somewhat elongated form and is convex to the west. Next day we crossed the pass Ben-la in a south-westerly storm. It raged and blew day and night, but the air remained quite clear. On the 6th we rode up a steep path to the Angden-la. In the rather deep snow and the tiring rubbish the horses can get on only a step at a time, and have often to stop and rest. Tsering rides past us with his yak caravan, and four Ladakis have stayed behind in the valley suffering from acute headache. At the top of the pass (18,514 feet) stands a huge cairn with strings and streamers, their prayers rising to the dwellings of the gods on the wings of the wind (Illusts. 207, 209, 210).

No words can describe the panorama around us. We stand above a sea of mountains with here and there a predominant peak. To the south we see the Himalayas clearer and sharper than before, and can perceive where the valley of the Brahmaputra runs on this side of the white ridge. To the north the Shuru-tso is much foreshortened, and the Dangra-yum-tso is hidden by Targo-gangri, which is sharply defined, though we are six days’ journey from it. Nay, even the contours of the mighty mountains on the north-east shore of the lake, which we saw in winter from the north, are distinguishable, and they lie fully ten days’ journey from here. I sit at the fire, drawing and making observations, as on all the passes. I am again on the Trans-Himalaya, 53 miles from the Chang-la-Pod-la, and now cross it for the third time. Northwards the water drains to the Shuru-tso, southwards to the Raga-tsangpo. My feet stand on the oceanic watershed, my eyes roam over this huge system, which I love as my own possession. For the part where I now stand was unknown and waited millions of years for my coming, lashed by innumerable storms, washed by autumn rains, and wrapped in snow in winter. With every new pass on the watershed of the gigantic rivers of India which I have the good fortune to cross, my desire and hope become ever greater to follow its winding line westwards to regions already known, and to fill up on the map the great white blank north of the Tsangpo. I know very well that generations of explorers will be necessary to examine this mighty intricate mountain land, but my ambition will be satisfied if I succeed in making the first reconnaissance.

We leave the cairn and the fire, its smoke covering the summit of the pass as with a torn veil, and follow the brook, of which the water will some day reach the warm sea after a thousand experiences. I turn a page and begin a new chapter in my life as an explorer; the desolate Chang-tang remains behind me, and Targo-gangri sinks below the horizon—shall I ever see its majestic peaks again?

We descend rapidly with the wind in our faces. Large blocks of ice fill the valley bottom between walls of black schists and porphyry. Several large side valleys open into ours, and deserted hearths are signs of the visits of nomads in summer. Our valley unites with the large Kyam-chu valley, which is 6 miles broad and descends from the Sha-la, the pass of the Trans-Himalaya over which our Tibetans had wished to guide us. The land round the nomad tents of Kyam is flat and open.

On May 7 we march on in a terrible wind with the blue mirror of the Amchok-tso on the south. The ground is flat and hard. A hare runs like the wind, as if his life were in danger, over this flat, where he cannot find the slightest cover. Eight sprightly antelopes show us their graceful profiles as they spring lightly along, rising from the horizon against a background of sky. Robert has drawn his fur over his head, and sits in the saddle like a lady, with both his legs dangling on the sheltered side, while Tashi leads his mule. But as the wind still blows through him, he lays himself on his stomach across the saddle. My horse sways when the wind catches the broad breast of its rider. The wind howls and moans in my ears, it whines and whistles as it used to do in the Chang-tang, a whole host of indignant spirits of the air seem to complain of all the misery they have seen in the world.

The plain is called Amchok-tang, and we march over it, following the main stream. Amchok-yung is a village of five tents, where are some fine manis bedecked with yak skulls, antelope horns, and slabs of sandstone, one of them, of a regular rectangular form, measuring 40 inches. The inhabitants of the village disappeared as if by magic; only an old man gave us his company as we inspected two of the tents. But when we had ridden on, the people crept out again from behind dung heaps, hillocks, and grass tufts, where they had hidden themselves.

The wind bores thick yellow sand out of the ground into a spout, which is so dense that it looks black on the shady side. It winds up in cyclonic spirals like the smoke of a tremendous explosion and, like a strange ghost, dances across the plain, and does not fall to pieces till it reaches the foot of the eastern mountains.

206. On the Upper Raga-tsangpo.
207. Angden-la.	208. Chomo-uchong from the East.

In our camp of this day, situated on the north-west shore of the Amchok-tso, we heard Chinese and Tibetan officials spoken of who were shortly to ride through the country in all directions, counting the tents, people, and herds. It was thought that this inspection was connected with the new taxation which the Chinese intend to introduce.

My boat lay ready on the strand, for May 8 was to be devoted to an excursion on the Amchok-tso.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

TO THE OUTLET OF THE CHAKTAK-TSANGPO IN THE BRAHMAPUTRA

The lake was free from ice, and only on the northern shore some blocks rocked on the surf. A south-west wind swept constantly over the country, and there was no prospect of good weather. A dozen Tibetans followed me at a respectful distance. I begged them to come nearer and see us start. The boat was brought down to the water, Rehim Ali and Shukkur took their places, and Lama carried me to the boat through the slowly deepening water. A promontory to the south, 34° E., was fixed as our goal, and the oarsmen began their struggle with the waves. For the first hour the lake was so shallow that the oars struck the bottom and stirred up inky-black mud. Shukkur cries out in time with the oars, “Shubasa, ya aferin, bismillah, ya barkadiallah”—to cite only a few words of his inexhaustible repertoire. Rehim Ali’s oar gives me a splash as it dips in, but I am soon dry again in the wind. The swell stirs up the mud from the bottom, and the water is so shallow that the waves show a tendency to break even out in the middle of the lake.

Now the sandspouts begin their threatening dance on the western shore, and in that direction the water gleams white. The storm sweeps over the Amchok-tso, and the two Mohammedans must put forth all their strength to force the boat forward against wind and water. The swell grows heavier, the depth is 7.9 feet, and the water assumes a greener hue. Shukkur Ali, our old fisherman, puts out his line, but nothing but floating algæ will bite. In several places are seen wild ducks, gulls, and wild geese. Nomads have just arrived and are putting up their tents in a gorge on the eastern shore. At length we reach the promontory, having sounded a maximum depth of only 12 feet.

After observations have been taken, a panorama sketched, and dinner eaten, we again set off in a northerly direction, and the boat dances before the brisk wind lightly as a wild duck over the waves. We sail past three more tents, sound 10.2 feet, and approach the northern shore, where the water is only 20 inches deep, and is a muddy soup. We run aground at a distance of 100 yards from the bank. Rabsang comes up running, leading my horse by the bridle, and some other Ladakis follow him. They help us to land, and light a much needed fire at the foot of the sand terrace which here rises from the bank.

The river Kyam-chu enters the Amchok-tso on the north side, and only 1¼ miles to the west of its muddy delta the Dongmo-chu flows out of the lake towards its confluence with the Raga-tsangpo in the east. Properly speaking, the Dongmo is only the continuation of the Kyam-chu, with the lake hanging like a bag on its right bank.

After the boat has been folded up, Muhamed Isa has to show us the way on horseback over the grass-grown sandhills. He guides me across the twenty shallow and treacherously swampy delta arms of the Kyam-chu. It is dark, but a beacon fire has been lighted in the camp, and the cakes of dung are heated to whiteness in the strong wind, and shine like electric light.

Next day I was up before the sun, in order to take an observation. The thermometer had sunk in the night to 0.3°, and the wind blew regularly as a trade-wind. It is pleasant to see the day dawn in the east, and life begin anew among the tents. The hired yaks have lain tethered during the night, and now they are allowed to wander freely over the pasture. Sleepy yawns are heard in the tents, and men come out and make up the fires; the jug bubbles in which the morning tea is stirred up with butter, and kettles are set on three stones over the fire. The puppies play in the open, and are glad that they have not to roll about to-day in a basket.

The days and months fly by to a chorus of storms, and spring still delays its coming. In the evening songs of the Ladakis I fancy I hear an undertone of home-sickness, and they rejoice at every day’s march which brings us a little further westwards. When we woke next morning, it blew as fresh as ever, and Robert had made himself a mask with Tibetan spectacles sewed into the eye-holes; he looked very comical in this contrivance, which was very appropriate in this land of religious masquerades.

The road, ascending the broad valley of the Pu-chu, led over open, slightly undulating ground to Serme-lartsa. Here old Guffaru was reported sick; he suffered from colic, and was well nursed. But late at night Robert came breathless to my tent to tell me the old man was dying. When I came to the tent the son, whose duty it was to keep the shroud ready, sat weeping beside his father, while the other men warmed their caps over the fire and applied them to the body of the patient. I ordered him a cold compress, but he asked me, to the intense amusement of others, just to go back to my tent again. Muhamed Isa laughed till he rolled over. Guffaru sat upright on his bed, moaned and groaned, and begged me to go away. I gave him a strong dose of opium, and next morning he was so brisk that he walked all the way, though a horse was at his disposal. The remains of Burroughs and Wellcome’s medicine chest had saved his life; he was thankful and pleased that his shroud was not required this time.

On May 11 we mounted to the pass Lungring (17,697 feet) in a bitterly cold snowstorm, and descended the valley of the same name to the bank of the upper Raga-tsangpo. On the 12th we marched upstream; the valley is broad, and is bounded on the north by great mountains. The thermometer had sunk to −0.8°, and the storm was dead against us. Occasionally it abated so much that we could hear the footfalls of the horses on the detritus, but we were benumbed when we came to the camp. Thick snow fell all the afternoon. My puppies sat together in the tent door and growled at the falling flakes, but when they saw it was no use, they snapped at the flakes as though they were flies and pawed at them. Then they went back into the tent, lay on the frieze blanket in the corner, and let it snow on.

On the next day’s march we passed Kamba-sumdo, where the two head sources of the Raga-tsangpo unite; the one, coming from the west, is named Chang-shung, the other, from the south-west, Lo-shung, i.e. “Northern” and “Southern Valley.” The Chang-shung is the larger. The Lo-shung we had to cross twice, and found the bed full of stones connected by slippery ice. In the west a large snow-covered ridge appeared, the Chomo-uchong, or “High Nun,” which was discovered by Nain Sing. Ryder measured it and produced an exact map of it. Belts of snow descend from the white summits down the dark flanks. Other Tibetans called it Chōōr-jong (Illust. 212).

Still marching south-westwards we approached at an acute angle the great main road between Lhasa and Ladak, the so-called tasam. As though to show its importance a caravan was just at the time travelling westwards in three columns. It moved so slowly through the landscape that we had to watch the mountain spur behind to convince ourselves that the small black lines were moving at all. Soon afterwards we pitched our tents in Raga-tasam (16,234 feet), a station on the great high-road, where we came in contact with the route of the English expedition under Ryder and Rawling for the first time since leaving Shigatse. Whatever the immediate future had in store for me, it was above all things my desire to avoid this route as much as possible. For the map which Ryder and Wood had executed is the best that has been surveyed of any part of Tibet; I could add nothing new to it with my modest equipment. But if I passed to the north or south of their line of march, I could supplement their map with my own explorations. In this I actually so far succeeded that out of eighty-three days’ marches to Tokchen on the Manasarowar only two-and-a-half days’ march ran along their route.

As I now perceived that we should have to travel on the road which Nain Sing in the year 1865, and Ryder and Rawling and their comrades in 1904, had passed along, I wrote, after consultation with Robert and Muhamed Isa, to Tang Darin and Lien Darin in Lhasa. I represented in an urgent appeal to the former, the High Commissioner, that it could not clash with any treaty if I, being already in Tibet, travelled to Ladak by one road or another, provided that I actually did go thither, and that I therefore begged permission to take the following route: I wished to take my homeward way past the lake Tedenam-tso, of which Nain Sing had heard, then to visit the Dangra-yum-tso, and thence to proceed to Tradum and to the Ghalaring-tso, the holy mountain Kailas, the Manasarowar lake, the sources of the Indus and the Brahmaputra, and lastly Gartok. To the other, the Amban of Lhasa, I also wrote about the way I desired to take, and promised to send him a report about it from Gartok. I told both that I wished for a speedy answer, and would wait for it in Raga-tasam.

As soon as I had come to a decision, I called Tundup Sonam and Tashi, and told them to get their sleep over by midnight. Then I wrote the above-mentioned letters and letters to my parents and to Major O’Connor. When my correspondence was ready, it was past midnight. The camp had lain several hours in sleep when I made the night watchman waken the two messengers and Muhamed Isa. Their orders were such as they had never received before. They were to travel day and night along the 220 miles to Shigatse and hand over my letters to Ma. They need not wait for an answer, for I had asked the Mandarins to send me special couriers. Provisions they need not take, for they would be able to get everything on the great high-road, and I gave them money to hire the horses they required. They would be able to reach their journey’s end in ten days, and in a month we ought to have an answer. If they did not find us in Raga-tasam on their return, they were to follow in our track.

Tundup Sonam and Tashi were in good spirits and full of hope when Muhamed Isa and I accompanied them outside the camp, and watched them disappear into the dark night. They made a detour to avoid the twelve black tents standing here, lest the numerous dogs of the village should bark. It was not far to the great high-road, and at the next tasam, as the stations are called, they could hire horses at daybreak. Muhamed Isa and I sat a while in my tent in lively conversation about our prospects. Not till I had crept into bed after a tiring day did it occur to me that it was perhaps cruel to let the two men ride alone day and night through Tibet. But it was too late, they must now fulfil their mission.

There was no hurry now. We stayed here seven days. Westwards the way was open, but not the way I wished to take, and therefore we were prisoners in our own tents. “Patience,” whispered the ceaseless winds. The unknown land lay to the north; I could not give it up till all my efforts had proved fruitless. We had cold unpleasant weather, with frequently more than 36 degrees of frost, and on the night of May 15 as much as 46.4 degrees. The Tibetans said that this neighbourhood is always cold, even when spring reigns all around.

I lay on my bed and read David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, and The Newcomes, for I had now a whole library to read through, the gift of the obliging Major O’Connor. Robert gave me lessons in Hindustani, and I drew types of the people. A puppy of the same age as our own warily came up to my tent and got a breakfast. Mamma Puppy was by no means pleased with this wayside guest, who looked comical, as shy and quiet as a mouse; he sat by the hour together at the fire and looked at me, at length falling asleep and turning on his side. When he appeared again at dinner, he was thoroughly worried by Puppy, but nevertheless went calmly to the family mat and laid himself down. Puppy was furious, but so dumbfoundered at this unexpected impudence that she laid herself down on the ground beside the mat.

Tibetans came every day to my tent and implored us to make a start. When this proved useless, they declared at length, that they could no longer supply us with provisions, for no more were to be had in the neighbourhood. I asked them, as an experiment, whether they would forward two letters to the Mandarins in Lhasa, but they replied that they had no authority to do this. They were much astonished when they heard that I had sent off letters five days previously. For two days I lay in bed, for I was quite at an end of my strength, and made Robert read to me.

On Whitsunday, May 19, we had another long palaver. The Tibetans read to me the instructions they had received from Lhasa, which were dated “on the tenth day of the second month in the year of the fiery sheep.” I was there called Hedin Sahib, and the orders contained the following clauses: “Send him out of the country. Let him not turn aside from the tasam, and guide him neither to the right nor to the left. Supply him with horses, yaks, servants, fuel, grass, and everything he wants. The prices he must pay are the usual prices fixed by the Government. Give him at once anything he asks for and refuse him nothing. But if he will not conform to the directions on his passport, but says he will take other routes independently, give him no provisions, but keep firm hold of him and send off messengers at once to the Devashung. Do not venture to think for yourselves, but obey. Any one in the provinces who does not obey will be beaten; so run the regulations you have to conform to. If he gives no trouble, see that the nomads serve him well and do him no harm on the way to Gartok. Then it will be the business of the Garpuns (the two Viceroys) to take him under their protection.”

And yet I was not satisfied. I told them that I could not think of conforming to my passport, which was contrary to my religion, and that I must go northwards from the Chomo-uchong to Saka-dzong. They were quite at liberty to send messengers to the Devashung. We would wait. Then they held a council, and at length agreed to let us take the northern route, but we must set out on May 21.

I lay on my bed and dreamed of the tramp of horses coming both from the east and the west, of the roads open to me to the mysterious mountain system in the north, round which my plans and my dreams circled continually like young eagles.

So we set out on May 21, north-westwards, and saw the summits of the Chomo-uchong disappear behind its outskirts. From the camp we could see several valleys in the north-west drained by the source streams of the Raga-tsangpo. Just beyond Raga-tasam we again left the route of the English expedition, and on the 22nd climbed up to the pass Ravak-la, which lies on a low ridge between two of the source streams of the Raga-tsangpo. On the 23rd we crossed four passes. The Kichung-la is the watershed between the Raga-loshung and the Chungsang, a river which takes an independent course to the Tsangpo. The ascent to the fourth pass, the Kanglung-la, was very tiresome, the ground consisting of wet alluvium, wherein the horses sank so deep that we preferred to go on foot and splash through the mud. We were now on the heights whence the water flows down to three of the northern tributaries of the Brahmaputra; the third flows to the Chaktak-tsangpo, which runs to the west of Saka-dzong. Here and there the snow, owing to wind, melting and freezing again, has assumed the form of upright blades, two feet high and sharp as a knife. Far to the south appear parts of the Himalayas, and we are here in a grand landscape of wild and fantastic relief. Now and then the view is obscured by dense showers of hail.

On the morning of the 24th all the country was hidden by thickly falling snow, and the weather at the end of May was more winterly than on the Chang-tang in December. We ride between steep cliffs down a deeply eroded valley, and side valleys run in with narrow deep openings. In one of them is a frozen waterfall. We often cross the clear water of the river which rushes along on its way to Saka-dzong and the Chaktak-tsangpo. Violent gusts of snow sweep through the valley from time to time, and then we can hardly see our hands, and the ground and the mountains become white. In the beautiful junction of valleys called Pangsetak our tents and those of the Tibetans were heavily weighted with snow.

On the 25th we go down further. Nomad tents are as rare as on the preceding days, for people come here only in summer. The path runs frequently up along the left terrace, high above the valley bottom, where the river has formed two large basins of dark-green water. We amused ourselves with rolling stones down the steep slope; they knocked against other boulders, dashed with a thundering noise into the valley, tearing up sand and dust, bounced up from the ground, and finally plunged into the basin, raising a cloud of spray. It was childish but very diverting. The valley passes into a plain, in the southern part of which runs the great high-road between Raga-tasam and Saka-dzong. The river we had followed down is the Kanglung-bupchu, but in Saka it is called Sa-chu-tsangpo. We pitched our camp in the mouth of the valley Basang on the north side of the plain.

From here to Saka-dzong is a short day’s journey. But, instead of travelling along this road, which Ryder has already laid down on his map, I wished to see the place where the Chaktak-tsangpo unites with the upper Brahmaputra. That would involve a long detour of four days’ journey, and to this our friends from Raga would not consent without the permission of the Governor of Saka. We therefore stayed a day in the Basang valley, while a messenger was sent to him. When the answer came it was, to our surprise, in the affirmative, but under the condition that the main part of the caravan should proceed straight to Saka-dzong. I even received a local passport for the excursion.

Among other natives who at this time sat for me as models was a youth of twenty years, named Ugyu, who had lived some years before with his mother and sisters in a valley to the north, where their tent was attacked and pillaged by robbers. They had defended themselves bravely with sabres and knives, but the robber band had had firearms, and Ugyu had been struck by a bullet, which had passed through his shoulder-blade and lung, and had come out at his breast. Large scars showed the course of the bullet. When one remembers that the leaden bullets of the Tibetans are as large as hazel-nuts, one is astonished that the boy did not die of internal hæmorrhage. He appeared, on the contrary, extraordinarily healthy and blooming, and had an amiable, sympathetic disposition.

I sat on a barley sack before Muhamed Isa’s tent and sketched. Meanwhile, the baggage and provisions were made ready for the excursion. My excellent caravan leader stood, tall and straight as a pole, watching the others filling the sacks we were to take with us. He had the boat also and everything we wanted for river measurements packed up. In the evening he arranged a farewell ball for Tsering, Shukkur Ali, Rabsang, Islam Ahun, and Ishe, who were to accompany Robert and me to the Tsangpo. He had bought in Shigatse a large fine guitar, on which he played himself in his tent. This evening the dancing and singing went off more gaily and merrily than ever. We expected good news from Lhasa, and were glad that the people in Saka had granted the permission I had asked for.

On the morning of May 27 the weather was really fine after a minimum of only 23°; had the spring come at last? The main caravan had already gone off westwards to Saka, and my party was ready when Muhamed Isa came to say farewell. He was ordered to remain in Saka till I returned, and to try by all means to gain the confidence of the officials by friendliness and prudent conduct. My small caravan was on the road to the south, and we stood alone on the deserted camping-ground. After he had received his instructions we mounted into our saddles at the same time and I rode after my men. I turned once more in the saddle and saw Muhamed Isa’s stately form upright on his grey horse, his pipe in his mouth, his green velvet cap on his head, and the black sheepskin loose on his shoulder, trotting quickly in the track of the caravan. It was the last time I saw him thus.

Soon we cross the great high-road, the tasam, and ride slowly up to the pass Gyebuk-la (15,846 feet), marked by four manis, which are covered with green flags of schist with incised Buddha images. The well-worn path, and three caravans of yaks which are just coming over the pass on the way to Saka-dzong, show us that this is an important trade-route. Two of the caravans came from the great town Tsongka-dzong, which lies five days’ journey southwards, not far from the frontier of Nepal. From Saka the caravans go over the Gyebuk-la, cross the Brahmaputra, ascend the Samderling valley, and by the Sukpu-la and Negu-la passes reach Tsongka-dzong, which supplies the nomads living in the north with barley. From Gyebuk-la there is a grand view over the sharp peaks and the glacier tongues of the Chomo-uchong. On the southern slopes of the pass there are pama bushes almost everywhere, and it is pleasant to see their fresh green needles again.

The road runs down the Kyerkye valley. On a smooth wall of rock “Om mani padme hum” is hewn in characters a yard high. At camp No. 167 the Tibetans of the neighbourhood came kindly to meet me and bid me welcome, and two of them led my horse by the bridle to my tent, as is the custom in this country.

Next day we march down the valley with fresh guides, and see several ruins telling of happier times now gone by. Terraced structures for irrigating the fields indicate that barley is grown in the district. In front of us is now the broad valley of the Brahmaputra, and we come to an arm of the river where a ferry is established to transport caravans and goods on the way between Tsongka-dzong and Saka-dzong from one side of the river to the other.

Camp No. 168 was pitched at the extremity of the tongue of gravel between the two rivers. The Chaktak-tsangpo had here a breadth of 92.2 feet, a maximum depth of 2.4 feet, an average velocity of 4.56 feet, and a discharge of 664 cubic feet per second. Its water was almost quite clear, and in consequence of its greater velocity forced its way far into the muddy water of the Brahmaputra. The latter had at mid-day a temperature of 48.9°, while the water of the tributary was a little warmer, namely, 49.8°. Our companions told us that all who come to the great river drink of the water, because it comes from the holy mountain Kailas, or Kang-rinpoche, in the far west.

Shukkur Ali sat with his ground line at a deep bay with slow eddies and pulled out of the water ten fine fish, a species of sheat with four soft barbs. He had raw meat as bait on his five hooks; at one end of the line a stone was tied, so that it could be thrown far out into deep water, and the other end was made fast to a peg driven in to the bank, and a stone was laid on the line so lightly in the fork of the peg that it fell when a fish bit. The fisherman can then occupy himself meanwhile with some manual work, such as mending shoes. He puts his fish in a small enclosed basin. The fish had white flesh, and were delicate.

On May 29 we measured the main river at a place where a low island divides it into two channels 175.5 and 180.4 feet broad respectively, with a maximum depth of 3.8 feet. Here the Brahmaputra carries 2532 cubic feet of water, and 3196 after receiving the Chaktak-tsangpo. At the confluence of the Dok-chu we had found only 2966 cubic feet, but the measurement was made a month and a half earlier. The ratio of the Brahmaputra to the Dok-chu was 5:2, and of the Brahmaputra to the Chaktak-tsangpo 7:2. The Dok-chu is therefore considerably larger than the Chaktak-tsangpo.

On May 30 we followed the broad valley of the Chaktak-tsangpo towards the north-west and west-north-west till we came to a district named Takbur, whence we intended to ride next day over the Takbur-la to Saka-dzong. But it did not come off; for before I was awakened, came a chief with five attendants and made a horrible disturbance with my men and our Tibetans from Kyerkye. The latter he beat with the flat of his sword, and he took away from the former the milk and butter they had bought the evening before, saying that no one had permission to sell us provisions. He told Robert that he had orders not to let us pass through to Saka-dzong, and that he would make us stay here three months. We might not hire yaks also—which was very inconvenient, as we had only a horse and a mule after all the hired animals had gone. We might not buy provisions; but this was not of much consequence, for Robert had shot four wild-geese and found a large quantity of eggs, and the river was full of fish.

I accordingly sent Islam Ahun and Ishe to Saka with a message that Muhamed Isa should send us five horses immediately. Then I summoned the supercilious chief to my tent, where he confirmed the accounts of my men. He declared that I had no right to deviate a single step from the great high-road, and that the district in which we were was under him, not under Saka-dzong, and therefore the local passport was worthless. He intended to carry out the orders he had received, as he valued his head. When I told him that I should report his uncivil behaviour to the Mandarins in Lhasa, he jumped up and drew his sword threateningly, but when he saw that my composure could not be shaken he quieted down. In the evening he came to tell us that we might cross the Takbur-la, and brought us both yaks and provisions. Who he was we could never discover, for in Saka no one would acknowledge that he knew him. Perhaps it was only a childish attempt to cure me of further deviations from the main road. However, it was a pity that we had lost a day here. When the morning of June 1 dawned, Islam Ahun and Ishe came with our horses, which we did not now need, and brought me greetings from Muhamed Isa, who sent word that all was well with the caravan; they were on friendly terms with the authorities, and were permitted to buy all they required.

We set off again northwards and marched through the Takbur valley, where there was abundance of game—hares, pheasants, and partridges—some of which Tsering shot, and foxes, marmots, and field-mice. In the distance we saw a grey prowling animal which we took for a lynx. There were also kiangs, which seemed very unconcerned. North-west, north, and north-east huge snowy mountains were seen from the Takbur-la (16,621 feet), of which Ryder and Wood had taken bearings. Like those Englishmen, I considered it certain that these peaks lay on the watershed of the Tsangpo, and belonged to the crest of the Trans-Himalaya. I had afterwards an opportunity of proving that this was a mistake. From the pass a river runs down to join the Sachu-tsangpo. Here we saw a number of yaks in the luxuriant grass, and a nearly tame kulan kept them company.

Where the river emerges into the Saka plain, we passed on its left side over a last small spur of the mountain on which the pass is situated, and here I rested for an hour with Robert, to draw a panorama of the interesting country. Tsering marched on with his men, and disappeared as a speck on the great plain. To the east-north-east the white houses of Saka-dzong could be seen in the distance, and with the glass we could make out the camp, two black tents and a white, the latter Muhamed Isa’s.

Then we too passed across the plain. On the left stood four tents, where the sheep were being driven into the fold for the night. At one place the road divides; travellers who have nothing to do in Saka-dzong take the southern road. We cross the Sa-chu river and the overflow of a spring; there is a strong wind from the west, and we long for the tents and the warmth of the camp-fires. At last we are there. Guffaru comes to greet us, and all the others call out to us “Salaam!” and “Ju!” I look in vain for Muhamed Isa’s stalwart figure, and inquire for him. “He is lying in bed and has been ill all day,” they answer. I suppose that he has his usual headache again, go to the brazier in my tent, and let Robert, as usual, unpack the things I require for my evening work. We were tired and chilled through and longed for our supper.

CHAPTER XXXIX

MUHAMED ISA’S DEATH

We had not been sitting long when Rabsang came to say that Muhamed Isa had lost consciousness, and did not answer when he was spoken to. I now perceived that he had had an apoplectic fit, and hurried off with Robert to his tent, which stood close beside mine. An oil-lamp was burning beside the head of his bed, where his brother Tsering sat weeping. The sick man lay on his back, tall, strong, and straight. The mouth was a little drawn on the left side, and the pupil of the left eye seemed very small, while that of the right eye was normal. The pulse was regular and strong, beating 72. I at once ordered hot bottles to be laid at his feet, and a bag of ice on his head. His clothes were loosened; he breathed deeply and regularly. The eyes were half open, but were lustreless. I called his name loudly, but he gave little sign; he tried to turn his head and move his right arm, uttered a low groan, and then remained still again. Robert was shocked when I told him that Muhamed Isa would not see the sun rise again.

While we were sitting beside his bed I inquired the circumstances from Rehim Ali and Guffaru, who had been with him all day long. During the four days they had waited for us here, he had been quite well, and had never complained of headache. He had tried, in accordance with the last instructions I had given him at the camp in the Basang valley, to win the friendship and confidence of the authorities. The day before he had been still in excellent spirits, had drunk tea with his most intimate friends in the caravan, and had sung to the accompaniment of the guitar.

On this day, June 1, he had got up with the sun, drunk tea, and had had a stormy interview with two Tibetans from the dzong. They had refused to supply the caravan with provisions, and then insisted that the caravan should leave the place at once. He had answered that the Sahib would soon be back, and that it would go badly with them if they did not obey him. They had gone away in anger, and then Muhamed Isa had breakfasted about ten o’clock, and had slept an hour. When he rose, he had complained of headache.

When the sun had reached its noonday height he had gone to look out for us, and had then had a violent attack of sickness, fallen on his left side and lain senseless. The other men hurried up, carried him to his tent, and massaged his body. He was restored thereby to consciousness, and spoke much but indistinctly, and chiefly with the god of Islam:

“I was a Lamaist but went over to Islam; help me now, O Allah, out of this severe illness; let me recover; forgive me my sins and all the wrong I have done to others; let me live, O Allah, and I will always keep thy commandments and will never omit my prayers.”

Then he had admonished the others to do their duty as heretofore, and thanked them that they had so patiently assisted him in his misfortune. Now and then he had asked for cold water. He had felt his left arm with his right hand, and asked whose arm it was, and had also said that he did not feel the shoe on his left foot. The whole left side was quite paralysed. Sitting upright, and supported by cushions, he had made the following request to Guffaru: “Thou, who art old, and keepest the commandments of religion, wilt not pollute thy hands if thou takest a knife and cuttest my neck; cut deep down to the spine, for that will relieve my infernal headache.” In his fearful suffering he struck his right hand against a box. About an hour later another stroke deprived him of speech, and after that he had only made a sign with his right hand, as though in despair at the approach of death. Towards four o’clock Tsering had come and thrown himself over him, weeping loudly. Muhamed Isa had also wept, and pointed to his lips to intimate that he could not speak. When we entered his tent about five o’clock his consciousness was almost gone. He remained in the same condition for an hour and a half, breathing quietly, with his mouth closed. I went therefore to my dinner, which Adul had prepared for me.

Robert and I studied Burroughs and Wellcome’s medical handbook, to see that nothing had been omitted. About eight o’clock we returned to the sick-bed. Muhamed Isa was now breathing with his mouth open—a bad sign, showing that the muscles of the jaws were relaxed; the pulse beat 108, and was very weak. The despair of old Tsering when I told him all hope was gone, was heart-rending. Half an hour later the breathing became slower and weaker, and about nine o’clock the death-rattle commenced, and the struggle of the muscles of the chest to supply the lungs with sufficient air. About every fortieth respiration was deep, and then there was a pause before the next came. They were followed by moans. His feet grew cold in spite of the hot bottles, which were frequently changed. At a quarter-past nine the breathing became still slower and the intervals longer. A death spasm shook his body and slightly raised his shoulders; it was followed by another.

The Mohammedans whispered to Tsering that he should leave his place at the head, for a Mohammedan must hold the lower jaw and close the mouth after the last breath. But the sorrowing brother could only be brought to leave his place by force. A third and last spasm shook the dying man, produced by the cold of death. After a deep respiration he lay still for 20 seconds. We thought that life had flown, but he breathed again, and after another minute came the last feeble breath, and then old Guffaru bound a cloth under the chin and covered the face with a white kerchief. Then all was still, and, deeply moved, I bared my head before the awful majesty of Death.

Horrified and dismayed, the Mohammedans poured into the tent, and the Lamaists after them, and I heard them from time to time call out in low tones, “La illaha il Allah!” Tsering was beside himself: he knelt by the dead, beat his forehead with his hands, wept aloud, nay, howled and bellowed, while large tears rolled down his furrowed sunburnt face. I patted him on the shoulder, and begged him to try and compose himself, go into his tent, drink tea, and lie down and rest. But he neither heard nor saw, and the others had to carry him to his tent, and I heard him wailing in the night as long as I lay awake. Yes, Death is an awful guest. We could hardly realize that he had so suddenly entered our peaceful camp.

I had a long conversation with Robert in my tent, and old Guffaru was sent for to receive my orders for the funeral. The Mohammedans were to watch in turn beside the body through the night. Early next morning the permission of the authorities would be obtained for the choice of a burying-place, and then the interment would take place.

At midnight I paid a last visit to my excellent, faithful caravan leader, who had fallen at his post in the prime of life. He lay long and straight, swathed in a shroud and a frieze rug, in the middle of his tent. At his head burned his oil-lamp, slightly flickering in the draught. The dead watch of five men sat mute and motionless, but rose when I entered. We uncovered his face; it was calm and dignified, and a slight smile played round the lips; the colour was pale, but slightly bronzed from the effect of wind and sun (Illust. 217). Arched over him was the half-dark bell of the tent—the tent which had fluttered in all the winds of heaven on the way through the Chang-tang, and from which Muhamed Isa’s merry jests had so often been heard in quiet cold Tibetan nights amidst the sound of flutes and guitars. Now depressing silence reigned around; only the stars sparkled with electric brilliancy.

How empty and dreary everything seemed when I woke on Sunday, June 2, the day of Muhamed Isa’s funeral! I went out and looked at the grave; it lay about 300 yards to the south-west of the camp. The Mohammedans had been early in the village to borrow a door, and had washed the body on it. Then they had wrapped it in Guffaru’s shroud, which was of thin linen, but quite white and clean. Muhamed Isa and I had often laughed together over the old man’s singular fancy of taking this death garment on the journey. Over the shroud (kafan) they had wrapped a grey frieze rug. The body lay now in the bright sunshine before the tent, on a bier consisting of the bottom of the two halves of the boat fastened together, and provided with four cross-poles for the bearers.

When all was ready the eight Mohammedans raised the bier on to their shoulders, and carried their chieftain and leader, royally tall, straight and cold, to his last resting-place. I walked immediately behind the bier, and then came Robert and some Lamaists; the rest were occupied at the grave, and only two remained in the camp, which could not be left unguarded. From Tsering’s tent a despairing wailing could still be heard. He had been persuaded not to come to the grave. He was heart and soul a Lamaist, and now he was troubled at the thought that he would never see his brother again, who had looked forward to the paradise of the Mohammedans. Some Tibetans stood at a distance. Slowly, solemnly, and mournfully the procession set itself in motion (Illust. 218). No ringing of bells, no strewn fir-branches, no chants spoke of an awakening beyond the valley of the shadow of death. But above us the turquoise-blue sky stretched its vault, and around us the lofty, desolate mountains held watch. In deep mournful voice the bearers sang, “La illaha il Allah,” in time with their heavy steps. They staggered under their burden, and had to change it frequently to the other shoulder, for Muhamed Isa was big, corpulent, and heavy.

At length we ascended a gravel terrace between two source streams. The bier was placed at the edge of the grave, which was not quite ready (Illusts. 219, 220, 221). It was deep, lay north and south, and had a cutting or niche on the left side, under which the body was to be laid, so that the earth might not press on it when the grave was filled in. Four men stood in the grave and received the body, and placed it, wrapped only in the white shroud, under the arch, arranging it so that the face was turned towards Mecca, where the hopes of all true believing pilgrims are centred.

Scarcely was all set in order when a painful incident occurred, an evil omen: the overhanging vault of loose, dry gravel fell in, burying the corpse completely, and partly covering the four men. There was silence, and the men looked at one another irresolute. Shukkur Ali broke the oppressive silence, jumped into the grave, out of which the others clambered, dug out the body again, and removed the gravel from the shroud as well as he could. A wall was then erected of sods cut from the bank of the brook so as to protect the body, the outer space was filled in with sand and stones, and finally a mound a yard high was thrown up over the grave, two stone slabs being placed at the head and foot.

When all was done the Lamaists went home, but the Mohammedans remained at the grave to pray for the deceased, sometimes kneeling, sometimes standing up with their palms before their face. Shukkur Ali, who had been Muhamed Isa’s old friend and comrade on many of his journeys in Asia, broke out into violent weeping and wailing, but the others mourned more quietly. Finally, I said a few words in Turki. During all my journeys I had never had a more efficient, experienced, and faithful caravan leader; he had maintained discipline in the caravan, been a father to the men, and taken the best care of the animals; he had been an excellent interpreter, and had treated the natives with prudence and tact. By his happy, humorous disposition he had kept all the others in good temper. In difficult situations he had always found the right way out. In unknown country he had climbed passes and summits to look for the best route—he had always gone himself and not sent others. His memory would always be cherished and honoured among us, and he had also earned a great name in the exploration of Asia, for during thirty years he had served many other Sahibs as faithfully and honestly as myself.

We went silently home after our day’s work.

In the lectionary of this Sunday occurred the Bible text, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”

Muhamed Isa had travelled far, and was highly respected in Asia. He had been in Saka-dzong before, in the year 1904, as Rawling and Ryder’s caravan leader. He little thought then that he would return once more, and here set up his tent for the last time after his long wanderings. In the Geographical Journal of April 1909, p. 422, Rawling refers to him as follows:—

Having mentioned Saka Dzong, let me break off one moment to pay a token of respect to the memory of that faithful servant of Sven Hedin who died here. Mohamed Isa was one of the finest characters it has been my fortune to be thrown with. Trustworthy and indomitable in his work, his knowledge of Asia was unequalled by any native, for he had accompanied Younghusband in his famous journey from China, he was with Carey, with Dalgleish who was afterwards murdered, and with Dutreuil de Rhins, when he was a helpless witness of his master’s violent death at the hands of the Tibetans. He acted as my caravan bashi in the Gartok expedition, accompanied Sven Hedin during his recent journey, and died, after thirty years of faithful service, at this desolate spot.

From letters I subsequently received from Younghusband, O’Connor, and Ryder, I learned that they also deeply mourned his loss.

The grave terrace rose close to the great high-road between Ladak and Lhasa on its northern side. The mound was next day covered with cut sods arranged in steps, and a small flagstone was set in the ground at the head of the grave, whereon passing Mohammedans could spread out a carpet and pray for the repose of the deceased. On a slab of slate, smoothed down with a chisel, I scratched the following inscription in English and in Roman letters:

MUHAMED ISA
CARAVAN LEADER UNDER
CAREY, DALGLEISH, DE RHINS, YOUNGHUSBAND
RAWLING, RYDER AND OTHERS
DIED
IN THE SERVICE OF SVEN HEDIN
AT SAKA-DZONG, ON JUNE 1, 1907
AT THE AGE OF 53 YEARS.

The writing was then cut in the stone by Islam Ahun. The name was also engraved in Arabic, and at the top the formula, “Om mani padme hum,” in Tibetan characters, that the people of the country might respect the grave. Future travellers will find the stone in its place—if the Tibetans have not taken it away.

In the afternoon of June 3 I sent for Tsering to my tent. He was now calm and resigned. He was to be my cook and body-servant as before, but his pay would be raised to 20 rupees a month, and this rise was to date back to our departure from Leh. He was allowed to keep the watch I had given to his brother. Guffaru, the oldest of the men, was Muhamed Isa’s successor as caravan bashi, received the same increase of pay as Tsering, and was allowed to use Muhamed Isa’s grey horse and saddle. In future he would live with two other men in the tent of the deceased.

As I foresaw that the discipline would not be what it was in Muhamed Isa’s time, I spoke seriously to the men, telling them that they must obey Guffaru as blindly as they had his predecessor, that they ought to hold together as before and continue to serve me faithfully. If any one began to quarrel and was disobedient, he would at once be handed the pay due to him and be sent off to go where he liked. Now that we travelled with hired yaks I could very well spare half the men, and therefore it was their interest to conduct themselves so that they might be retained. Rabsang and Namgyal answered in the name of all, that they would hold together, serve me faithfully, and follow me anywhere.

Then Robert was commissioned to look through the property of the deceased in the presence of Tsering, Guffaru, Shukkur Ali, Rehim Ali, and the Hajji, and after he had made an inventory, to pack it in separate boxes, which were ultimately to be delivered to his wife in Leh together with his outstanding pay. Among his things were some articles of value which he had bought in Shigatse—carpets, tea-cups with metal saucers and covers, ornaments, and woven materials. He had left behind only 10 rupees in ready money, a proof that he had been thoroughly honest in his management of the business of the caravan.

After all relating to the interment had been carried out, the Mohammedans came to ask for a few rupees to enable them to hold a memorial feast in the evening in honour of the deceased. They would make a pudding, called halva, of flour, butter, and sugar, drink tea, and kill a sheep. The heathen also, as the Mohammedans called their Lamaist comrades, were to be present. They sang, ate, and drank, and probably hardly thought of the departed.

Two gentlemen from the dzong had been with me on June 2. The Governor himself was absent, travelling in his province to number the tents under his administration and to draw up a list of all the inhabited valleys—all by order of the Chinese. Pemba Tsering, the second in command, was very agreeable and polite, but regretted that he could not supply us with provisions any longer, as he must be prepared to furnish necessaries to the men who were constantly passing to and fro between Gartok and Lhasa. To confirm his words he called up the five Govas or district inspectors of the country, who declared that the poor country could not supply all the tsamba and barley we required. I intimated to them that we should still remain a few days awaiting the answer from Lhasa; then they rose, protesting that I might stay here as long as I liked, but that they would not provide me with provisions.

On the same day a large white-and-blue tent was set up by our camp, but it was not till June 4 that the occupants, the Govas of Tradum and Nyuku, paid me a visit. They had heard of our long stay, and wished to find out the state of affairs for themselves. The Nyuku Gova began the conversation:

“Saka and Tradum are put down on your passport, but not Nyuku. Should you, nevertheless, go thither, I will allow you to stay one night, but not longer, for it is stated in the passport that you must travel straight to Tradum.”

“My dear friend,” I replied, “when once I am in your place we shall become such good friends that you will ask me to stay a whole month to consolidate our friendship. Should you afterwards visit me in India, your visit will be the more agreeable the longer it lasts.”

He nodded with a roguish smile, and no doubt considered me a wag, but added that he must obey the orders he had received from the Devashung.

“When I am in correspondence with the Mandarins in Lhasa, and am waiting for their answer, the Devashung has no right to interfere.”

“Very well, then it will be best for you to remain here and not come to Tradum or Nyuku; provisions are still scarcer there.”

Afterwards Pemba Tsering came again, bringing two sacks of barley and a sheep. He had become much more compliant since he had talked with the other officials, and promised he would try to procure what we needed. We had still two poor horses and a mule from Shigatse, and he was to have one of the animals as a reward. After some consideration he chose the mule. The two horses we sold for a mere trifle to a stranger.

Now we longed to get away from this miserable Saka-dzong and its sad associations. Out in God’s open, glorious Nature the winds blow away sorrow. We daily calculated, Robert and I, how long it would be before Tundup Sonam and Tashi returned. If the answer were sent by the so-called Chinese flying post, it might arrive any moment. But the days passed and there was no news. One day some horsemen rode past our camp on the way to the west, and reported that they had seen my two messengers in Kung Gushuk’s garden in Shigatse, but they knew nothing of their further intentions. “Patience,” whispered the west wind again. In the maze of difficulties in which we became ever more involved, my hopes rested on the answer of the Chinamen. I had told the officials here that I would set off at once if they would allow us to take a more northern route to Nyuku, but, as they would not hear of it, we remained where we were.

When I looked out of my tent my eyes were attracted to the dark grave on its hill. It seemed as if the grave held us fast, though we longed to get away from it. All was dreary and dismal; we missed Muhamed Isa, and his absence caused a great blank. But life goes on as usual. When the sun rises, the women of the village stroll about collecting dung into baskets, while the men drive the yaks and horse to pasture. They sing and whistle, children scream and dogs bark. Blue smoke rises from the chimneys of the village or from the black tents standing within walls among the houses. From the roof of the Saka-gompa with a statue of Padma Sambhava the single lama of the monastery blows his conch. Ravens and bluish-grey pigeons pick up all kinds of morsels among the tents, and the wolves which have come down in the night retire again to the mountains. Riders and caravans pass eastwards to a better land, where poplars, willows, and fruit trees are clothed in their finest summer dress. But we are prisoners in this desolate country, with Muhamed Isa’s grave as a focus.

I soon perceived what a depressing effect the loss of the big powerful caravan leader had on my men: they became home-sick. They talked of the warmth of their own firesides, and they took to crocheting and knotting shoes for their children and acquaintances. They gathered round the evening fire and talked of the pleasant life in the villages of Ladak. Robert remarked how dreary and disagreeable Tibet was, and how warm and delightful it was in India; he was pining for his mother and his young wife. I should like to know whether any one was more eager to be off than myself, who had so much before me which must be accomplished. Yes, I saw only too plainly that I could not achieve all I was striving for with my present caravan; it was worn out and used up, which was really not to be wondered at after all it had gone through. My fate was driving me back to Ladak. But I must endeavour to make the most of my chances on the way. And then? All was dark to me. But I knew that I would never give in, and would not leave Tibet till I had done all that lay in my power to conquer the unknown land on the north of the upper Brahmaputra.

On the morning of the 5th came our old friend the Gova of Raga-tasam. He had heard that we were in difficulties, and offered to speak a good word on our behalf to Pemba Tsering. Afterwards the two came to my tent and informed me that I might take the northern route to Nyuku. The Gova received one of our best horses for his trouble. Now we had six left of our own horses, among them three veterans from Leh, two other horses and a mule. Next evening Guffaru came for the first time to receive instructions, and on June 7 we set out early.

I stopped a moment at the grave. It was striking and imposing in all its simplicity. In its dark chamber the weary one slumbers till the end of time. He listens to the howling of the western storms and the wolves, he freezes in the cold of winter, but he does not see the summer sun, and with longing for the well-remembered past he hears the horses stamping on the hard pebbles. I thought of the Lama Rinpoche in his dark den at Linga.

Farewell, and grateful thanks!

CHAPTER XL

ALONG BYWAYS TO TRADUM

The day was brilliant; it was not spring, it was summer. Flies, wasps, and gadflies buzzed in the air, and worms of all kinds crept out of the ground to enjoy the warm season, all too short here. It was hot, 70.2° at one o’clock. The sun seemed to be as scorching as in India. The Sa-chu valley widens out westwards; wild-geese, herons, and ducks sit on the banks of the river, and choughs croak on the mountain which we skirt on the right side of the valley. The fresh grass has sprouted out of the earth in its green summer garb, but it will not really thrive till after the warm rains. We meet a caravan of 200 yaks in five sections, each with two whistling drivers.

“Whence have you come?” I ask.

“From Tabie-tsaka, where we have been to fetch salt.”

“Where does the lake lie?”

“To the north, in Bongba, thirty days’ journey from here.”

“Does the road cross over high passes?”

“Yes, there is a high pass twelve days to the north.”

And then they passed on with their light-stepping yaks towards Saka-dzong. It was the first time I had heard this important lake mentioned, and I envied the men of the salt caravan who had traversed this way through the Trans-Himalaya quite unknown to Europeans.

222. Woman at the Mouth of the Chaktak-tsangpoin the Tsangpo.	223. Tibetan of Saka.	224. Lama in Saka-dzong.
Sketches by the Author.

We left the tasam on our left; we turned aside north-westwards straight to the Targyaling-gompa standing with its red lhakang, its small white buildings, and its large chhorten on a terrace immediately above the spot where Guffaru has pitched the camp. Twenty lamas came down to find out whether we were thieves and robbers who intended to attack the convent. “Certainly not,” Guffaru answered, “we are peaceful travellers passing the night here.” “We will not allow it,” they replied; “you must remain on the high-road.” I now sent Rabsang up, and he was surrounded at the gate by thirty monks. He was told the same; a European had never been here, and none should ever enter the monastery. If the gentlemen of the dzong attempted to get us in, they should pay the penalty with their lives. Charming ecclesiastics! Even Rabsang, who was a Lamaist and wore several gaos on his neck, was not allowed in. He was in the service of a European. So inimically disposed were these monks that they stopped up the channel we drew our water from. The Devashung, they said, had nothing to do with them. We had heard in Saka-dzong that these monks were bellicose and independent; there they had said that the free-booter who had stopped us on May 31 must have been a disguised monk. But we could do without them and their monastery, which seemed small and unimportant.

Here our four puppies fell ill of a peculiar complaint: they ran about restlessly, snuffed and sneezed, had matter in their eyes, and no appetite. At night I heard one of my tent companions whine and howl, and next morning he lay dead on his rug.

Leaving Rawling’s and Ryder’s route to the left, we proceeded to the bank of the Chaktak-tsangpo and then northwards along the river. It has a swift current, but does not form rapids; to the south is seen the portal through which it emerges from the mountains. At the village Pasa-guk, which is larger than Saka-dzong, we bivouacked on the right bank. The river here was 141 feet broad, 2 ft. 7 in. deep at most, and carried 629 cubic feet of water. On May 28 it carried 664 cubic feet, but it receives the Sa-chu and other tributaries below the village Pasa-guk.

In the middle of the village is a serai with a large store of salt in bags. Here a market is held from time to time, salt being the medium of exchange. I tried to obtain further information about the country in the north, but when I compared the different data together, the result was a hopeless muddle. For instance, I asked travellers who came from Tabie-tsaka, how far they marched each day, and where they passed lakes, rivers, and passes; and when I added the distances together and laid down the direction on the map, the line reached to Kashgar, all through Tibet and Eastern Turkestan! It was impossible to obtain useful data about the country to the north. I must see it with my own eyes. But how would that be possible?

The Hajji came to me, angry and excited, to complain that Guffaru had struck him. I sat in judgment and heard evidence. The Hajji had refused to watch the horses when his turn came, and the caravan bashi had therefore thrashed him. The sentence was, that the Hajji should receive his discharge in Nyuku.

Robert and I sat on the velvety grass on the bank and gazed with longing eyes at the half-clear water dancing merrily on to its destination at the coast. An old man and a youth joined us, and entertained us with dance and song. The old man danced and stamped on the ground in a three-cornered mask of goat leather with red strips and bells, and the youth sang this unintelligible song:

On June the 10th I left the Chaktak-tsangpo to the right, unfortunately without having learnt whence it comes. We ascended a side valley named Rock, in a north-westerly direction. We had previously passed two towers which had formerly been the fort of a rebellious lama. He was at feud with Saka-dzong, but was defeated. In the camp at the pool Churu the evening seemed to me fearfully long. Home-sickness had become infectious. The Ladakis sang no more, but made shoes for their children, and thereby turned their thoughts more intently to their home. I too found no rest after the day’s work. If we only knew what answer the Mandarins would send, but our messenger did not return. We seemed to have stumbled into a morass and to be stamping in it without moving on. Oh, thou dreary, awful Tibet, thou black, poor superstitious folk! In the stillness of the night the step of the camp watchman was pleasant company.

After a night temperature of 14.4° we rode on westwards over a very flat pass, a watershed between the Chaktak-tsangpo and Nyuku, along a road which had once been a tasam; numerous ruins and manis were memorials of that time. The district was thickly peopled by nomads, and black tents were often seen where sheep bleated and dogs barked; women and boys guarded the flocks, and yaks grazed on the slopes. The country calls to mind the summer pastures on the Pamir. A second puppy died in the night, and was almost eaten up by ravens before morning.

On June 12 we came again to the tasam at Nyuku where we set up our camp. The Gova of Nyuku, whose friendship I had gained at Saka-dzong, was very obliging, and said that I was quite at liberty to make another detour to the north, as I seemed to dislike the high-road. It would take me up to a pass, where almost all the mountains of the world could be seen, especially Lumbo-gangri immediately to the north. Here we should come in contact with people of the province of Bongba, who perhaps would sell us all necessaries. In Nyuku the third puppy died. The Tibetans said that it suffered from a throat complaint called gakpa, which is very common in the country. Mamma Puppy gave herself no trouble about her little ones when they were ill, but seemed rather to avoid them. We washed them with warm water, and tended them to the best of our power, and did everything we could think of to save the last. The Tibetans could not understand how we could make such a fuss about a dog.

Bluish-white flashes quivered over the mountains all the evening, and their outlines stood out sharp and dark in the lightning. That is a sign of the setting in of the monsoon rains on the southern flank of the Himalayas, and all look forward to them. When rain falls up here, the grass grows up in a couple of days, the cattle become fat and sleek, the milk is thick and yellow; at the present time it is thin and white, and produces little butter. The existence of the nomads, and indeed the prosperity of the whole country, depends on the monsoon. It is the summer pasture which helps the herds to endure the scarcity of the rest of the year. If the rains fail, the stock languish and die.

The night is silent. Only occasionally is heard the hearty laugh of a girl or the bark of a dog. The camp watchman hums an air to keep himself awake.

The 13th was a lazy day; we had to wait for Tundup Sonam and Tashi. I always shave myself on rest days—it is pleasant to feel clean, even when there is no one to smarten oneself up for. Robert shot three wild-geese, and caught two yellow goslings which walked into his tent and made hay there. We put them in the crystal-clear Men-chu river, hoping that some kindly goose-mamma would take to them.