from the northern glaciers in light but most keen
breezes. There was no food to be procured except a
little thin milk, and a few small watery potatos. The
latter have only recently been introduced amongst the
Tibetans, from the English garden at the Nepalese
capital, I believe ; and their culture has not spread in
these regions further east than Kinchinjunga, but they
will very soon penetrate into Tibet from Dorjiling, or
eastward from Nepal. My private stock of provisions
consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my friend
Mr. Hodgson—had fallen very low; and I here found
to my dismay that of four remaining two pound cases,
provided as meat, three contained prunes, and one
dindon ciux truffes ! ” Never did luxuries come more
inopportunely; however the greasy French viand served
for many a future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my
rice, and according to the theory of chemists, to supply
animal heat in these frigid regions. As for my people,
they were not accustomed to much animal food;
two pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their
common daily diet under cold and fatigue. The poor
Tibetans, especially, who undergo great privation and
toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and a
very little butter and s a lt: this is not only the case
with those amongst whom I mixed so much, but is also
mentioned by MM. Hue and Gabet, as having been
observed by them in other parts of Tibet.
On the 1st of December I visited the village and
terrace, and proceeded to the head of the Yangma
valley, in order to ascend as far towards the Kanglachem
pass as practicable. The houses were low, built of
stone, and clustered in groups against the steep
face of the terrace ; filthy lanes wound amongst them,
so narrow, that by turning my head, I could look into
the slits' of windows on either hand, and feel the
noisome warm air in whiffs against my face. Glacial
boulders lie scattered around and beneath the clusters
of houses, which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish
from the native rock. I entered one house by a narrow
low door through walls four feet thick, and found
myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood, and
dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story,
which was quite dark, and as I stood m it my head
was in the upper, to which I ascended by a notched
pole (like that in the picture of a Kamtschatk house in
Cook’s voyage), and went into a small low room. ^ The
inmates looked half-asleep, they were intolerably indolent
and filthy, and were spinning wool and smoking. A
door in the wall of the upper apartment led me on to
the stone roof of the neighbouring house, from which I
passed to the top of a boulder, descending thence by
rude steps to the narrow alley. Wishing to see as much as
I could, I was led on a winding course through, in and
out, and over the tops of the houses of the village,
which alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or
gravel-pit, and gipsies living in old lime-kilns; and of
all sorts of odd places that are turned to account as
human habitations.
From the village I ascended the terrace, which is
a perfectly level, sandy, triangular plain, pointing down
the valley at the fork of the latter, and abutting against
the flank of a steep, snow-topped mountain to the