ing this extreme altitude, it has a good many fields in which various kinds of grain are cultivated, and there is not a little pasture-land in its neighbourhood. The care of a paternal Government had even gone the length of keeping this room clean and free from insects; so it was a pleasant change from my tent, the more so as it began to rain, and rain at 13,395 feet very soon displays a tendency to turn into sleet and snow.

A tent is very healthy and delightful up to a certain point; but it hardly affords any higher temperature than that of the external air; and on these great altitudes at night the air cools down so rapidly, and to such an extent, that it may be a source of danger to some people. There is a safeguard, however, in the purity of the Himálayan air and in our continuously open-air life among the mountains. I have been injured by the unusual severity of the winter this year (1874-75) in England; yet got no harm, but rather positive benefit, from camping on snow for nights together in my thin tent in Zanskar and Súrú, and in much more severe weather than we have had here in England. Still, the paternal Government's mud-palace at Losar was an agreeable change, and afforded me the luxury of a sounder sleep than I had had for several nights. The Nakowallah, however, did not at all appreciate the advantages of having a solid habitation about him. I should have thought it would have been simple enough even for his tastes; but nothing would satisfy that fleecy dog until he was allowed to lie outside of the door instead of inside, though that latter position exposed him to hostile visits from all the dogs of the village; and there was a ferocious growling kept up all night outside the door, which, however, was music to me compared with the howling of the wind about my tent, to which I had been exposed for two or three nights previously.

At Losar I had to arrange for a very hard journey of

five days, over a wild stretch of country where there are no villages, no houses, and scarcely any wood, so that supplies of every kind have to be taken for it. In order to get into Lahaul and hit the junction of the Chandra and Bhaga rivers on the cut road which runs from Simla to Leh, two routes are available from Losar, both involving a stretch of days over a desolate and glacier-covered country. They both pursue the same course for nearly a day's journey, on to the gradual western slope of the Kanzam or Kanzal Pass; but before crossing it one route takes off to the right, up the highest portion of the valley of the Chandra river, until it strikes the cut road to Leh, near the top of the Barra Lacha Pass (16,221 feet), and then descends the Bhaga to the junction of the two rivers, along the cut road and down a valley where there are plenty of villages. This was the road which I wished to follow, because I always preferred keeping as high up as possible; but the people at Losar, who were to furnish me with coolies, declared against that route, and implored me not to insist upon going by it. There is a very difficult river to be forded, the water of which is so rapid that the bigárrís, or porters, can only manage to get through by holding one another's hands and forming a long line. When Sir Douglas Forsyth was Commissioner of the Hill States, he passed over this route, losing two of his bigárrís (women, I think) in this river; and though he compensated their families, this unfortunate event is advanced to this day as a conclusive reason against the Barra Lacha route, and will probably be so advanced for centuries, if the world lasts as long.

Hence I had to adopt the other route, which proved to be quite elevated and cold enough. It crosses the Kanzam Pass at a height of almost 15,000 feet, and then goes down the Chandra river on its left bank, through what is called by the natives the Shigri valley,

until it reaches the cut road to Leh at the foot, and on the north side, of the Rotang Pass, which is 13,000 feet high, and the mountains of which separate Lahaul from the Kúlú valley. Immediately after that point, this route crosses the river to the village of Kokser, and proceeds from thence to the junction of the Chandra and Bhaga, from whence there are various, but all rather difficult, routes leading to Kashmir. The two routes I have mentioned, which meet at the head of the Chandra-Bhaga—or what is almost equivalent to them, these two rivers before their junction — enclose a large extent of great glaciers and immense snowy mountains, with no habitations, and almost inaccessible to human beings. An equally high range runs down. the left bank of the Chandra (the route which I followed), throwing out its glaciers down to and almost. across the river; so that it may easily be conceived that few portions even of the Himálaya, which are at all accessible, afford such a stretch of desolation and of wild sublimity.

It was necessary for me, on this part of the journey, to take sixteen bigárrís, nearly half of whom were women, besides an extra yak to carry wood; and for my own use I got a little dark Spiti mare, which looked nothing to speak of, but actually performed marvels. We also took with us a small flock of milch goats, which could pick up subsistence by the way, and one or two live sheep to be made into mutton on the journey. A few miles beyond Losar we came to the end of the Lee or Spiti river, which I had now followed up from its confluence with the Sutlej, through one of the wildest and most singular valleys in the world. Its whole course is 145 miles; but such figures give no idea of the time and immense toil which are required in order to follow it up that short course, in which it has a fall of about 6000 feet. It has an extraordinary end, which

has already been described, and also a curious commencement; for it begins, so to speak, at once, in a broad white bed of sand and stones, being there created by the junction of two short and (when I saw them) insignificant streams, of about equal size and length; the Líchú, which comes from the Kanzam Pass, and the Pítú, which has its rise in the 20,000-feet snowy peak, Kiii. Earlier in the season, however, just after mid-day, when the snows and glaciers are in full melting order, there must be a magnificent body of water in this upper portion of the Lee raging and foaming along from bank to brae.

The marches from Nako in Hangrang, to Kokser in Lahaul, on the cut road to Leh, are :—

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE VALLEY OF GLACIERS.

THE KANZAM PASS-THE L PEAKS-ENORMOUS GLACIERS-SHIGRI OR GLACIER VALLEY-STORM AND SNOW-A NIGHT SCENECROSSING A GLACIER-INCREDIBLE PERFORMANCES OF A GHÚNT -SPITI PONIES FALL OF A MOUNTAIN GLACIER FLOWERS

* FORDING STREAMS—A FALL-DJEÓLA—TIBETAN DOGS-SIlver.

STARTING from Losar at six on the morning of the 25th August, with the thermometer at 42°, the first part of the journey gave no idea of the desolation which was soon to be encountered. The day was bright and delightful, and the air even purer and more exhilarating than usual, as might be expected above 13,000 feet. After leaving the Spiti river and turning south-west up the Líchú river, we found a beautiful valley, full of small willow-trees and bright green grass, though it could have been very little less than 14,000 feet high. It was the most European-looking valley I saw among the Himalaya before reaching Kashmir; and it was followed by easy grassy slopes, variegated by sunshine and the shade of passing clouds, which slopes led up to the extreme summit of the Kanzam or Kanzal Pass, a height of 14,937 feet. Here there was a very imposing view in front, of immense glaciers and snowy peaks, over or about 20,000 feet high, which rose up not far from perpendicularly on the other side of the youthful Chandra river, which raged down, far beneath our feet,