upper storey through a shattered corner, now, lower
down, betraying the emptiness of a bastioned courtyard
at the base of the tower. The rock-cresses and
the saxifrages have long established themselves between
the crevices of the stones, and on their old, worn surfaces
the sombre mosses and vivid orange and black
lichens spread themselves in the pure air and sunlight.
Overhead, among the beflagged sheaves at the corners
of the keep, the ravens hop heavily and cry, and along
the shore the seagulls dip and squeal.
Hidden behind Pe-di or Nagartse jong, against the
slope of a hill, are a few white, straitened hovels in tiers,
banded mysteriously with red and crowned with brown
cornices and broken parapets. On the door of each is
a kicking swastika in white, and over it a rude daub
of ball and crescent.
At the street corners the women stand, one behind
another, peeping and curious. Men, too, are there,
who stare with eyes that cannot understand. Nowhere
in Tibet has our incursion meant less to the people than
here, up at the Yam-dok tso, and one feels that in years
to come the passing and repassing beside the holy
waters of the unending line of our quick-stepping, even-
loaded mules and tramping, dust-laden men with
light-catching rifle barrels, will only take its proper
place among the myriad other and equally mysterious
legends that wrap with sanctity the waters of this
loveliest of all lakes.
Nagartse is the best-known town between Gyantse
and L h a sa ; it is placed upon a neck of land, which
joins the jong to the hills behind. The rock on which
the jong stands must at one time have been lapped by
the waters of the lake, but at the present time the
N A G A R T SE JONG 99
Yam-dok tso has retreated so far, that a quashy
stretch of vivid green quagmire spreads between the
road and the shore. The jong itself is of no great
interest. It is the usual ramshackle congeries of unsteady
walls and uneven floors and, except the rooms
which were at this time occupied by the Ta Lama,
The Dumu tso from the Ta la.
and afterwards tenanted by Lieut. Moody, who was
left in command of the post, two small chapels are the
only rooms which are still rain-tight. As I have said
Samding lies five miles across the plain— five miles of
quaking bog, intersected by the deep-cut channel,
whereby part of the waters of the Karo chu are led into
the lake. As an illustration of the mistake made by
other surveyors in asserting that the lake in the centre
VOL. IX. y#