SUMMIT OP FORKED DONKIA, AND “ GOA” ANTELOPES.
me down on both these occasions. Another time I
ascended a third spur from this great mountain, and
was overtaken by a heavy gale and thunder-storm, the
latter of which is a rare phenomenon \ it blew down my
tnpod and instruments which I had thought securely
propped with stones, and the thermometers were
broken, but fortunately not the barometer. On picking
up the latter, which lay with its top down the hill,
a large bubble of air appeared, which I passed up and
down the tube, and then allowed to escape; when I
heard a rattling of broken glass in the cistern. Having
another barometer at my tent, I hastened to ascertain
by comparison whether the instrument which had
travelled with me from England, and with which I had
taken so many thousand observations, were seriously
injured: to my delight, however, I found the damage
to be very trifling.
The Kinchinjhow spurs are not accessible to so
great an elevation as those of Donkia, but they afford
finer views over Tibet, across the ridge connecting
Kinchinjhow with Donkia.
Broad summits here, as on the opposite side of the
valley, are quite bare of snow at 18,000 feet, though
where they project as sloping hog-backed spurs from
the parent mountain, the snows of the latter roll down
on them and form glacial caps, the reverse of glaciers
in valleys, but which overflow, as it were, on all sides
of the slopes.
On the 18th of September I ascended the range
which divides the Lachen from the Lachoong valley, to
the Sebolah pass, a very sharp ridge which runs south
VOL. I I .