mountains around, which, are hare and craggy above,
but sloping below. Bleak and forbidding as the
situation of any Himalayan village at 10,000 feet
elevation must be, that of Wallanchoon was rendered
more so from the comparatively few trees; for though
the silver fir and juniper were both abundant higher up
the valley, they had been felled here for building
materials, fuel, and export to Tibet. From the naked
limbs and gaunt black trunks of those that remained,
stringy masses of bleached lichen (Usnea) many feet
long, streamed in the wind: both men and women seemed
fond of decorating their hair with wreaths of this lichen,
dyed yellow with leaves of Symplocos.
The village was very large, and occupied aflat on the
east bank of the river, covered with huge boulders: the
ascent to it was extremely steep, probably over an ancient
moraine, though I did not recognise it as such at
the time. Cresting this, the valley at once opened, and
I was almost startled with the sudden change from
a gloomy gorge to an open flat and a populous village
of large and good painted wooden houses, ornamented
with hundreds of long poles and vertical flags, looking
like the fleet of some foreign p o rt; while swarms
of good-natured, intolerably dirty Tibetans, were
kotowing to me as I advanced.
The houses crept up the base of the mountain,
on the flank of which was a very large, long convent;
two-storied, and painted scarlet, with a low black roof,
and backed by a grove of dark junipers; and the hillsides
around were thickly studded with bushes of deep
green rhododendron, scarlet berberry, and withered