My anxiety was now wound up to a p itch ; I saw
men with matchlocks emerging from amongst the
rocks under Chomiomo, and despairing of permission
being obtained, I goaded my pony with heels and stick,
and dashed on up the Lachen valley, resolved to
make the best of a splendid day, and not turn back till
I had followed the river to the Cholamoo lakes. The
Sepoys followed me a few paces, but running being
difficult at 16,000 feet, they soon gave up the chase.
A few miles ride in a north-east direction over an
open, undulating country, brought me to the Lachen,
flowing westward in a broad, open, stony valley,
bounded by Kinchinjhow on the south (its face being
as precipitous as that on the opposite side), and on the
north by a low range of rocky, sloping mountains, of
which the summits were 18,000 to 19,000 feet above
the sea. Enormous erratic blocks strewed the ground,
which was sandy or gravelly, and cut into terraces
along the shallow, winding river, the green and
sparkling waters of which rippled over pebbles, or
expanded into lagoons. The already scanty vegetation
diminished rapidly, and consisted chiefly of scattered
bushes of a dwarf scrubby honeysuckle and tufts of
nettle, both so brittle as to be trodden into powder,
and the short leafless twiggy Ephedra, a few inches
higher. The most alpine rhododendron (.R . nivale)
spread its small rigid branches close to the ground;
the hemispherical Arenaria, another type of sterility,
xose here and there, and tufts of forget-me-not,
Artemisia, Astragali, and Androsace, formed flat
cushions level with the soil. Grass was very scarce,
but a running wiry sedge bound the sand like that of
our English coasts.
A more dismally barren country cannot well be
conceived, nor one more strongly contrasting with the
pastures of Palung at an equal elevation. The long
lofty wall of Kinchinjhow and Donkia presents an
effectual barrier to the transmission of moisture to the
head of the Lachen valley, which hence becomes a type
of such elevations in Tibet. As I proceeded, the soil
became still more sandy, chirping under the pony’s
fee t; and where harder it was burrowed by innumerable
marmots, foxes, and the “ Goomchen,” or tailless rat,
sounding hollow to the tread, and being so dangerous
that I was obliged to dismount and walk.
The upper part of Kinchinjhow is composed of bold
ice-capped cliffs of gneiss, and long spurs stretch
northwards from it, forming the rounded terraced hills
I had seen from Donkia pass. Between these spurs
were narrow valleys, at whose mouths stupendous
blocks of gneiss rest on rocks of a much later geological
formation,
Opposite the most prominent of these spurs the
river runs west, forming marshes, which were full of
Zannichellia palustris and Ranunculus aquatilis, both
English and Siberian plan ts: the waters were full of a
species of shell, and the soil near the edge, which was
covered with tufts of short grass, was whitened with
effloresced carbonate of soda. Here were some square
stone enclosures two feet high, used as pens, and for
pitching tents in ; within them I gathered some unripe
barley.