feet above the water, which here falls in a torrent from
boulder to boulder, pausing only when delayed by the
frost, which hangs great combs of ice from every
gray dead fir athwart the stream. Junipers and a few
twenty-foot rhododendron trees take advantage of the
shelter of a turn in the range of hills just where the
stone breast-work of Tong-shong crosses the road.
The heavy, resinous smell of the pines harmonises well
with the carpet of dark-green moss which sprawls at
will over the seamed rocks of Indian red and sienna. The
mountains, 2,000 feet over our heads, barely allow
the road to squeeze between their gigantic Symplegades.
Five miles beyond the end of Lingma-tang the road
crosses the torrent twice and one comes out over a
stony patch and a carpet of brown pine needles into a
little clearing, where a heavy fall of grayish-black
granite warns the traveller of the strange characteristics
of the road for the next two or three miles.
Some years ago— ninety or a hundred, perhaps, if one
may judge by the size of the largest of the trees growing
among the dibrisWa Himalayan convulsion shattered
vertically the eastern side of the hills which hem in the
tumbling river on the west. They now stand stark, austere,
and perpendicular a thousand feet above the roadway
and the stream. No trees crown their summits, not
a bush can find root-hold on their granite faces. But
at their feet a long, continuous buttress of granite, torn
rawly from its matrix by the shock, forms a ramp 200
feet in height below the crannies and clefts of the gigantic
curtain overhead. This ramp is composed of boulders
varying in size from mere splinters of granite, which have
been used wherewith to metal the bridle path, to one
great giant at Ta-karpo or “ White Rock.” This is
Gautso.
TH E R E W AS A M IL IT A R Y AN D TE L EG R A PH POST HERE,
ON THE SOUTH S ID E OF THE H IM A LA Y A S , THROUGHOUT
THE E X P ED IT IO N . IT IS TH E LA S T H A L T IN G -P LA C E B E LOW
THE WOOD L IN E . TH E R E IS NOT A TR E E B E TW E E N THIS
P L A C E AN D LA D EN ON THE OTHER 'S ID E OF TH E TU N A
p l a t e a u . All greys excej>t dark black-green spray.