which hem in the rivers of southern Tibet, this scenery
remains monotonous, waterless, heart-breaking. One
has said good-bye to the Himalayan landscape with
a suddenness that can hardly be conceived, and from
this point onwards the track winds round the easy
curves of hills or picks its way along the flat, stubbly
plains till, as one turns the last corner beyond Kamparab,
Phari Jong comes out from behind the last spur on the
left and dominates the distance, a square, grayish block
of keep and bastion and parapet commanding the
converging highways of three States, and itself humiliated
by the overhanging 10,000 feet of Chumolhari’s
rock and ice.
The town of Phari deserves more than a passing
notice. The name— which in Tibetan is spelled
Phag-ri, or the pig-hill ”— has been explained in
many ways. The small mound on which it is built
may, or may not, have been shaped like a pig, as the
inhabitants say. The name may, or may not, have some
reference to the pig goddess who is reincarnated by
the shores of the Lake of Palti as the Dorje Phagmo—
the Abbess of Samding. There is a third explanation,
which the lamas of the monastery of Chat-sa, four miles
away to the north, say is self-evident, but of that later.
The Jong itself is clearly of Chinese-plus-European
construction. Its date, as ascertained by papers at
Lhasa, was said by the two Jong-pens, or fort commandants,
to be about 1500 a .d . • it is, indeed, impossible
to assign it to a date later than 1600, and the assertion
of the custodians may well be true. A well-constructed
stone parapet eighteen feet high, with corner
bastions, surmounts a low hill about twenty feet in
height. Above this, occupying the centre of the hill,
Phari jong.
CHUMOLHARI RISES BEHIND TH E FO RT, AND THE SCA LE
OF THE BU ILD IN G IS G IV EN B Y THE L IN E OF THE E X P E D I TION
IN THE MID DLE d i s t a n c e . Grit, grey, bistre, drab,
silver and blue.