country, treeless and sterile though it be, and are extremely unwilling to go down any of the passes which lead to more genial climes. The poverty of this province, however, has not saved it from more than one conquest. Nearly a thousand years ago, it was under the Lassa Government; and two centuries after, it fell under the dominion of Kublai Khan. In more recent times, it was sometimes subject to the Chinese Tartars and sometimes to the chiefs of Baltistan or of Ládak, according to which party happened to have the upper hand in the neighbourhood. It came into our possession about thirty years ago, through an arrangement with the Maharajah of Kashmir, into whose power it had fallen, and was conjoined with Kúlú under an assistant commissioner in 1849. CHAPTER XXVI. UPPER SPITI. A NOVEL ROUTE- -"VERY POSSIBLE"-KAZEH-KÍ MONASTERY- FURTHER FROM Dankar, or rather from Kazeh or Kaja, a day's journey beyond, my course was a novel one, almost unknown to Himálayan tourists. When considering, at Simla, how I should best see the Himálaya and keep out of the reach of the Indian monsoon, I had the advantage of an old edition of Montgomerie's map, in which the mountains and rivers are laid in, but which is now out of print; and I saw from it that the lie of the Himalaya to the north-west presented a series of rivers and elevated valleys, in the very centre of the ranges, which might enable me to proceed to Kashmir by almost a new route, and one of great interest. I could get no information about this route, further than was conveyed by the admission of a Panjabi captain, who had been in the Himálaya, and who said on my consulting him on the subject-"Well, I should think it would be very possible." It certainly proved to be so, seeing that I got over the ground, and I got some information regarding it from the Moravian mis sionaries, What I had to do was to follow up the Lee or Spiti river almost to its source, then to cross the Kanzam Pass into the frightfully desolate Shigri valley, or valley of the Chandra river; to follow down that river to its junction with the Bhaga; to follow up the Bhaga for a few marches, and then to cross over the tremendous Shinkal Pass on to the Tsarap Lingti river, and the valleys through which streams flow into the upper Indus. It is the first portion of this journey that I have now to speak of; and to render it intelligible, it is only necessary for the reader to follow up the Spiti river as far as he can get, to cross the mountains at its source, and then to descend the Chandra river to its junction with the Bhaga. At Kazeh, a day's journey from Dankar, I left the usual track, which goes over the Parang-la Pass to Changchemmo and Leh, and which involves a journey that is on many grounds objectionable. Here I had the choice of two routes, one on the left and one on the right bank of the Lee, but chose the latter; and as the former was within sight great part of the way, I had the opportunity of observing that it was considerably the worst of the two, though an inexperienced traveller might rashly conclude that nothing could be worse than the one I followed. To Kazeh we kept up the left bank of the Lee, which was no longer sunk in deep gorges, but had a broad open valley, and spreads itself here and there amid a waste of white stones. Here I crossed the river, at a point where the banks drew close together, and on what, by courtesy, might be called a wooden bridge. This sang-pa is very high and shaky, and the central portion of it is composed of three logs, without any parapet, and with loose branches laid across it, which are awkward and dangerous to step upon. Stopping for breakfast at the village of Kharig, I saw the large Lama monastery of Kí on the other side of the river, perched on the top of a hill in a very extraordinary manner. This monastery, according to Csomo de Körös, was established in the eleventh century of the Christian era by a pupil of the wellknown Atisha. It is a celebrated place; but (whether or not it contains any portion of the dozen Spiti nuns) its monks do not seem to exercise much civilising influence in their own neighbourhood, for the people of Kharig were much more like thorough savages than the residents of any other Himálayan village which I entered. It being rather a hot day, the children, and even boys and girls of ten and twelve years old, were entirely naked; and the number of children was far beyond the usual proportion to that of households. Morang, where we camped, is a small village even for these mountains, and is about 13,000 feet high; but it had an intelligent and exceedingly obliging múkeathe functionary who provides for the wants of travellers --who had been educated by the Moravian brethren in Lahaul, and spoke Hindústhani. There was a wonderful view from this place both up and down the great valley of the Spiti river, bounded downwards by the Rupa-khago, or the snowy mountains of the Manerung Pass, and upwards by a grand 20,000-feet peak, supporting an enormous bed of névé. Both on this day's journey and on the next, the banks of the river and the mountains above them presented the most extraordinary castellated forms. In many parts the bed of the Lee was hundreds of yards broad, and was composed of white shingle, great part of which was uncovered by water. The steep banks above this white bed had been cut by the action of the elements, so that a series of small fortresses, temples, and spires seemed to stand out from them. Above these again, gigantic mural precipices, bastions, towers, castles, cita dels, and spires rose up thousands of feet in height, mocking, in their immensity and grandeur, the puny efforts of human art, and yet presenting almost all the shapes and effects which our architecture has been able to devise; while, yet higher, the domes of pure white snow and glittering spires of ice far surpassed in perfection, as well as in immensity, all the Moslem musjids and minars. It was passing strange to find the inorganic world thus anticipating, on so gigantic a scale, some of the loftiest efforts of human art; and it is far from unlikely that the builders of the Taj and of the Pearl Mosque at Agra only embodied in marble a dream of the snows of the Himálaya or of the Hindú Kúsh. After leaving Morang we crossed another shaky sang-pa over the Gyundi river, and another one before reaching Kiotro, where we encamped in a sort of hollow beyond the village. The place seemed shut in on every side; but that did not preserve us from a frightful wind which blew violently all night, and, with the thermometer at 43°, rendered sleep nearly impossible in my tent. There was a good path on the left bank of the Lee, for my next day's journey from Kiotro to Losar; and the rock-battlements were more wonderful than ever; but just before reaching that latter place, we had to cross to the right bank of the river by means of a very unpleasant jhúla, the side ropes of which were so low as to make walking along it painful. In Losar, instead of using my tent, I occupied a small mud-room which the Government of British India has been good enough to erect for the benefit of travellers. I do not know what the reason may be for this unusual act of generosity. Perhaps it is because Losar is one of the highest villages in the world, though it is inhabited all the year round, being 13,395 feet above the level of the sea. Notwithstand |