deliberately devised to do so, and came down from some very rude state of society; but, at all events, it must have been found exceedingly serviceable in repressing population among what Koeppen so well calls the snowlands of Asia. If population had increased there at the rate it has in England during this century, frightful results must have followed either to the Tibetans or to their immediate neighbours. As it is, almost every one in the Himalaya has either land and a house of his own, or land and a house in which he has a share, and which provide for his protection and subsistence. The people are hard-worked in summer and autumn, and they are poor in the sense of having small possessions and few luxuries; but they are not poor in the sense of presenting a very poor class at a loss how to procure subsistence.

I was a little surprised to find that one of the Moravian missionaries defended the polyandry of the Tibetans, not as a thing to be approved of in the abstract or tolerated among Christians, but as good for the heathen of so sterile a country. In taking this view, he proceeded on the argument that superabundant population, in an unfertile country, must be a great calamity, and produce "eternal warfare or eternal want." Turner took also a similar view, and he expressly says-" The influence of this custom on the manners of the people, as far as I could trace, has not been unfavourable. . . To the privileges of unbounded liberty the wife here adds the character of mistress of the family and companion of her husbands." But, lest so pleasing a picture may delude some of the strong-minded ladies (of America) to get up an agitation for the establishment of polyandry in the West, I must say it struck me that the having many husbands sometimes appeared to be only having many masters and increased toil and trouble. I also am by no means sure that the Tibetans are so chival

rous as to uphold polyandry because they regard “the single possession of one woman as a blessing too great for one individual to aspire to." Nor shall I commit myself to the ingenious opinion that "marriage amongst them seems to be considered rather as an odium-a heavy burden- the weight and obloquy of which a whole family are disposed to lessen by sharing it among them."

CHAPTER XXV.

SPITI.

OPEN CAVES LARI AND PO ROPE-BRIDGES- EXTRAORDINARY RAVINES DANKAR-INSOLENCE-SECLUSION OF SPITI-UGLY

WOMEN-DRESS-PRODUCTS-GAY NUNS-HISTORY.

FROM the desolate Chinese district of To-tzo I passed into the not less elevated British Himálayan province of Spiti. The path to Lari, the first village in Spiti, where we camped under a solitary apricot-tree, said to be the only tree of the kind in the whole province, was very fatiguing, because large portions of it could not be ridden over; and there were some ticklish faces of smooth, sloping rock to be crossed, which a yak could hardly have got bver, but which were managed, when riderless, in a wonderful manner by the shoeless glúnt, or mountain pony, which I had at Chango. The scenery was wild and desolate rather than striking-no house, no tree, and hardly even a bush being visible. There was a great deal of limestone-rock on this journey; and at some places it was of such a character that it might be called marble. We passed several open caverns; and in one of these, about a third of the way from the Totzo river, I stopped for breakfast. It was a magnificent open arch, about fifty feet high in front, and as many in breadth, in the face of a precipice, and afforded cool shade until after mid-day, when the declining sun began to beat into it. But the Karitha river, which occurs

immediately after, ought to be passed in the morning, because there is only a two-poled bridge over it, on which even a ghúnt cannot cross; and the stream was so swollen at mid-day by the melting snow that my pony was nearly lost.

The next morning I was delayed at Lari by the information that messengers had arrived at the other side of the river with a letter for me and some money, but were unable to cross the river, a jhúla which formerly existed there having given way. This seemed exceedingly improbable, but I went down to inquire. There was a double rope across the stream, and I told the messengers to fasten the letter to it, and so send that across, but to keep the money, and found that both were for the Gwalior captain whom I met near Nako, so I ordered the bearers to proceed to Pú in search of him. Where there is no bridge exactly, there is often a double rope of this kind across the deep-sunk rivers of the Himalaya, to enable the villagers on opposite sides of the gorge to communicate with each other; and the rope is sometimes strong enough to allow of a man being slung to it, and so worked across. If only the rope be sound, which cannot always be depended on, this method of progression is preferable to the jhúla; because, though it may try the nerves, it does not at the same time call for painful exertion which disturbs the heart's action. I learn from Captain Burton that similar rope-bridges exist in Iceland, and that he usually found the ropes had been spliced more than

once.

Po, or Poi, my next camping-place, was a very pleasant village, with little streams running between willowtrees, and with peaks and walls of snow rising over the precipices, and immense steep slopes of shingle immediately around. Another day took me to Dankar, under immense dark precipices, which lined both banks of the

river, of slate and shale. It would be well for a practical geologist to examine that part of the Spiti valley, and also the portion between Po and Lari; for it is possible they may contain coal. For the most part the way to Dankar was tolerably level and good; but the height of the water of the Lee at this season compelled us to make a difficult detour through probably the most extraordinary series of gorges there is in the world. We moved along a dry water-course, between perpendicular tertiary or alluvial strata rising to hundreds and even to thousands of feet above. The floor of these clefts was fifteen or twenty feet broad, and though they must have enlarged considerably at the top, they appeared to do so very little to the eye. It was not rock but soft deposits which rose on both sides of us; and though there had been every irregularity in the lateral effects of the water, which had cut out the passages in many directions, there had been very little in its perpendicular action, for, in that respect, the water had cut almost straight down. High up, at the edges of these extraordinary ravines, the strata had been worn away so as to form towers, spires, turrets, and all sorts of fantastic shapes, which could be seen by looking up the cross passages and at the turnings. Often high above, and apparently ready to fall at any moment, a huge rock was supported on a long tower or spire of earth. and gravel, which (being a little harder than the strata around, or having possibly been compressed by the weight of the rock) had remained standing, while the earth round it had crumbled or been washed away. These threatening phenomena were either on the edge of the clefts or rose up from their sides, and were very similar to the rocks which are to be seen on glaciers supported on pillars of ice. The way was most tortuous, and led into a cul-de-sac, the end of which we had to ascend with difficulty.