ice-bound crags of Chumolhari, on all sides the hills
sweep down gently to the stream or valley, bellying,
brown, grassy slopes— for all the world like Sussex
downs tilted together at an angle. There was not on
all that waste of formless and almost naked rock a
stick of vegetation a foot high. Only little dead bents
“ Susan ” and Tsering on Phari plain.
of aconite prick up still brown and innocent. Nothing
else breaks the monotony of the finger-long blades of
coarse low-lying grass. I do not suppose that in all
the world you could find a contrast so great as that
which meets the eye at Dota during your stage from
Gautso to the, plain below the pass. From Dota to
the Tang la, and indeed on northwards for three
thousand miles, except for the fertile alluvial flats
