the two banks of filth and offal, runs a stinking channel,
which thaws daily.1 In it horns and bones and skulls
of every beast eaten or not eaten by the Tibetans—
there are few of the latter— lie till the dogs and ravens
have picked them clean enough to be used in the
mortared walls and thresholds. The stench is fearful.
Half-decayed corpses of dogs lie cuddled up with their
mangy but surviving brothers and sisters, who do not
resent the scavenging ravens. Here and there a stagnant
pool of filth has partially defied the warmth, and
carrion, verminous rags, and fur-wrapped bones are
set round it in broken yellowish ice. In the middle
the brown patch is iridescent. A curdled and foul
torrent flows in the day-time through the marketplace,
and half-bred yaks shove the sore-eyed and
mouth-ulcered children aside to drink it. The men
and women, clothes and faces alike, are as black as
the peat walls that form a background to every scene.
They have never washed themselves. They never intend
to wash themselves. Ingrained dirt to an extent that it
is impossible to describe reduces what would otherwise
be a clear, sallow-skinned, but good complexioned
race to a collection of foul and grotesque negroes.
Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke.” Thomas Manning’s
concise description of Phari as he knew it on the 21st
of October, 1811, holds to this day, and the cleaning
up which went on inside the walls of the great buttressed
fort after our arrival provoked no imitation in the
foul streets and grimed turf-built hovels at its foot.
And the disgust of all this is heightened by an everpresent
contrast, for, at the end of every street, hanging
in mid-air above this nest of mephitic filth, the cold
and almost saint-like purity of the everlasting snows of
On the Glacis of Phari jong.
I HAVE IN C LU D ED THIS P ICTU R E S IM P L Y B E C A U SE IT SEEMS
TO ME TO B E A B E A U T IFU L THING IN IT SE L F . A T THE
SAME TIM E, IT IS NOT U N CHA RA C TERISTIC OF THE B A R E ,
G R IT T Y SOIL AN D D U ST -LAD EN W IN D OF THIS E X PO SED
p l a i n . From amber to mastic brown.