I ¡ ir 11
if
I » il¡||
€ (i
I f
:i 11»
l l i l
lili!
II:
i ll
É l Jí
i
1
ni
[í fll
m
NÉ-NYENG 243
which wrapped its base and indeed all the valley in a
tawny fog.
N6-nyeng, or as it was invariably known Nai-ni,
was another place which was afterwards to become
of great interest and importance to us. Seven miles
away to the south, just before the valley opened
out from the gorges of the Nyang chu, it commanded
our road to India, and was the scene two or three
times of fighting between the Tibetans and ourselves.
Ne-nyeng lies in an amphitheatre of steep hills ; looking
at it from across the river the sight was typically
Eastern, and might have been a theatre “ back-cloth,”
painted with the deliberate intention of including
every suggestion of the Orient ; but he would have been
a clever man who limned such a scene as this. All round
this half-circle of converging spurs the plain hot rock
glared at one. The line cut by its upper cornices against
the sky was harsh and exact. The blue that descended
into the ravines and arched the peaks was cloudless and
whitened; on one conical hill, almost inaccessible, sat
a square yellow block-house commanding the town from
a height of a thousand feet. A little lower down, when
the eye got used to the glare, another and stronger fort,
built of the very rock on which it rested, could just be
made out by the straightness of its lines. In the middle
of this great recess the river flats stretched white and
dusty, draining down by a slackening gradient from the
clefts of the amphitheatre. Just where it gained its
equilibriumj Ne-nyeng rose in a garden of greenery. The
square white houses blinked in the sun, the high unchecked
line of the square building in the centre of
the town, half monastery, half keep, showed up dustily
VOL. I. 16 *