beast was led behind one with mincing steps and starting
eyes. It was a bad road ; and the noise of waters many
hundred feet sheer below was always painfully present
in the ears. Lagyap was the next halting-place, hanging
over the gulf like an eagle’s nest.
Beyond Lagyap, the road, as a road, did not exist.
The ascent was tolerably steep, and one either strode
from boulder to boulder, or trod, at the risk of one’s
ankles, between the stones. This, after five miles, is
wearisome work. And even the sight of Lagyap Pool,
the most beautiful basin of ice-bound emerald-water that
I have ever seen, fails to cheer one up. Up under the
pine trees, slipping and staggering, where no road pretended
to have been ever cleared, we reached Changu
Lake at last. Here we were clear of trees % the dwarf
rhododendrons ran along the ground in acre patches, a
foot in height, but the last tree barely showed its head
over the great natural dam which shuts in the waters of
the lake. One leaves a land of timber ; one comes to a
land of rock, and the dividing line is as clean as if it had
been the work of man. Behind us, also, we left one of the
most magnificent views in the world, for the deep green
valleys of Sikkim, like some loosely thrown length of
myrtle green velvet, he out for the last time many
thousands of feet below, stretching on till the grey
gauze of sheer distance overtook the tint, and only
the pure, clean argent of those Himalayan snows, which
have no rival on this planet, lifted themselves into
the blue.
It is an austere country into which we are now
moving. The lake is a mile long and perhaps 600
yards in width; nearly all the year round it is frozen,
though in the bitterest days of mid-winter, when the The path through Sikkim cut out of the cliff side : rhododendron roots overhang the “ trang.” To
the left the rock falls eight hundred feet sheer. Part of the “ 10-13 mile 55 track.