other side of the Sutlej. Every now and then in the afternoon, and when the morning sun began to warm its snows, avalanches shot down the scarred sides of the Kailas; and when their roar ceased, and the wind died away a little, I could hear the soft sound of the waving cascades of white foam-some of which must have rivalled the Staubbach in height-that diversified its lower surface, but which became silent and unseen. as the cold of evening locked up their sources in the glaciers and snow above. Where we were, at the height of about 9000 feet, the thermometer was as high as 70° Fahrenheit at sunset; but at sunrise it was at 57°, and everything was frozen up on the grand mountains opposite.

Though deodars and edible pines were still found on the way to Jangi, that road was even worse than its predecessor, and Silas and Chota Khan several times looked at me with hopeless despair. In particular, I made my first experience here of what a granite avalanche means, but should require the pen of Bunyan in order to do justice to its discouraging effects on the pilgrim. When Alexander Gerard passed along this road fifty-six years before, he found it covered by the remains of a granite avalanche. Whether the same avalanche has remained there ever since, or, as my coolies averred, granite avalanches are in the habit of coming down on that particular piece of road, I cannot say; but either explanation is quite sufficient to account for the result. The whole mountain-side was covered for a long way with huge blocks of gneiss and granite, over which we had to scramble as best we could, inspired by the conviction that where these came from there might be more in reserve. At one point we had to wind round the

corner of a precipice on two long poles which rested on a niche at the corner of the precipice which had to be turned, and which there met two corresponding poles from the opposite side. This could only have been avoided by making a detour of some hours over the granite blocks, so we were all glad to risk it; and the only dangerous part of the operation was getting round the corner and passing from the first two poles to the second two, which were on a lower level. As these two movements had to be performed simultaneously, and could only be accomplished by hugging the rock as closely as possible, the passage there was really ticklish; and even the sure-footed and experienced hillmen had to take our baggage round it in the smallest possible instalments.

At Jangi there was a beautiful camping-place, between some great rocks and under some very fine walnut and gnew (edible pine) trees. The village close by,though small, had all the marks of moderate affluence, and had a Hindú as well as a Lama temple, the former religion hardly extending any further into the Himálaya, though one or two outlying villages beyond belong to it. Both at Pangay and Rarang I had found the ordinary prayer-wheel used-a brass or bronze cylinder, about six inches long, and two or three in diameter, containing a long scroll of paper, on which were written innumerable reduplications of the Lama prayer-“ Om mani pad me haun "-and which is turned from left to right in the monk's hand by means of an axle which passes through its centre. But in the Lama temple at Jangi I found a still more powerful piece of devotional machinery, in the shape of a gigantic prayer-mill made of bronze, about seven or eight feet in diameter, and

which might be turned either by the hand or by a rill of water which could be made to fall upon it when water was in abundance. This prayer contained I am afraid to say how many millions of repetitions of the great Lama prayer; and the pious Ritualists of Jangi were justly proud of it, and of the eternal advantages which it gave them over their carnal and spiritually indifferent neighbours. The neophyte who showed the prayer-mill to me turned it with ease, and allowed me to send up a million prayers. In describing Zanskar, I shall give a fuller account of these prayer-wheels and mills. The temple at Jangi, with its Tibetan inscriptions and paintings of Chinese devils, told me that I was leaving the region of Hindúism. At Lippe, where I stopped next day, all the people appeared to be Tibetan; and beyond that I found only two small isolated communities of Hindú Kunaits, the one at Shaso and the other at Namgea. The gnew tree, or edible pine (Pinus Gerardina), under some of which I camped at Jangi, extends higher up than does the deodar. I saw some specimens of it opposite Pú at about 12,000 feet. The edible portion is the almond-shaped seeds, which are to be found within the cells of the cone, and which contain a sweet whitish pulp that is not unpleasant to the taste. This tree is similar to the Italian Pinus pinea; and varieties of it are found in California, and in Japan where it is called the ginko.

The road to Lippe, though bad and fatiguing, presented nothing of the dangers of the preceding day, and took us away from the Sutlej valley up the right bank of the Pijar, also called Teti, river. In colder weather, when the streams are either frozen or very low, the nearest way from Jangi to Shipki is to go all

the way up the Sutlej valley to Pú; but in summer that is impossible, from the size and violence of the streams, which are swollen by the melting snows. At this large village a woman was brought to me who had been struck on the head by a falling rock about a year before. It was a very extraordinary case, and showed the good effects of mountain air and diet, because a piece of the skull had been broken off altogether at the top of her head, leaving more than a square inch of the brain exposed, with only a thin membrane over it. The throbbing of the brain was distinctly perceptible under this membrane; and yet the woman was in perfect health, and seemed quite intelligent. I once saw a Chinaman's skull in a similar state, after he had been beaten by some Tartar troops, but he was quite unconscious and never recovered; whereas this young woman was not only well but cheerful, and I recommended her to go to Simla and get a metallic plate put in, as that was the only thing which could be done for her, and her case might be interesting to the surgeons there.

But at Lippe it became clear to me that, while the mountain air had its advantages, the mountain water, or something of the kind, was not always to be relied upon, for I found myself suffering from an attack of acute dysentery of the malignant type. As to the primary origin of this attack I was not without grave suspicions, though far from being sure on the subject. At Pangay one day I congratulated myself on the improved state of my health as I sat down to lunch, which consisted of a stew; and half an hour afterwards I began to suffer severely from symptoms correspondent to those caused by irritant metallic poisoning. I spoke

to my servants about this, and had not the remotest suspicion of Silas; but it struck me that another of them showed a certain amount of shamefacedness when he suggested bad water as the cause; and though Captain and Mrs Henderson had been living for a month at Pangay, they had found nothing to complain of in the water. It is very unpleasant when suspicions of this kind arise, because it is almost impossible to disprove them; and yet one feels that the harbouring of them may be doing cruel injustice to worthy men. But, some time before, I had become convinced, from a variety of circumstances, that drugging, which the people of India have always had a good deal of recourse to among themselves, is now brought to bear occasionally upon Anglo-Indians also, when there is any motive for its use, and where covering circumstances exist. It may seem easy to people who have never tried it, and have never had any reason to do so, to determine whether or not poisonous drugs have been administered to them; but they will find that just as difficult as to dismount from a horse when it is going over a precipice. Such is the fact even where the poison is one which can be detected, but that is not always the case; and, in particular, there is a plant which grows in almost every compound in India, a decoction of the seeds of one variety of which will produce delirium and death without leaving any trace of its presence behind. The pounded seeds themselves are sometimes given in curry with similar effect, but these can be detected, and it is a decoction from them which is specially dangerous. Entertaining such views, it appeared to me quite possible that some of the people about me might be disposed not so much to poison me as to