picturesque castellated appearance; and the water of the Tsarap Lingti was of a clear, deep blue, with long, large, deep pools. The stream we had descended was of a muddy grey colour; and for some way after their junction, the distinction between the water of the two rivers was as marked as it is at the junction of the Rhone and the Arve beneath the Lake of Geneva; but (as is usual in unions between human beings of similarly dissimilar character) the coarse and muddy river soon gained the advantage, and polluted the whole stream. Probably there is a lake up in that unsurveyed part of the mountains from whence the Tsarap Lingti descends, and hence its waters are so pure; for the rocks between which it ran are of the same character as those of its muddy tributary.

Shortly after we passed Char (12,799 feet), perched most picturesquely on the other side of the river, but connected with our side by a very well constructed and easy jhúla. Immediately after, there was a campingground, and some attempt was made at a change of bigárrís, but the Char people refused to have anything to do with the burden of our effects. I found my tent pitched at the little village of Suley, on a very small, windy, exposed platform, about a thousand feet above the river, and had it moved on again. We then passed down into a tremendous ravine, at the bottom of which there was a narrow deep gorge choked up with pieces of rock, beneath which a large mountain stream foamed and thundered. Soon after, we reached a bad, but sheltered and warm, camping-ground, on the brink of the Tsarap Lingti, and there stayed for the night, the Suley people bringing us supplies.

The next day took us over very difficult ground, with no villages on our side of the river, but with Dargong and Itchor on the other. We camped at the village of Mune, beside a fine grove of willow-trees, the

first I had seen in Zanskar, and near the Mune Gonpa, the Lamas of which were indisposed to allow me to examine their retreat. The next day took me to Padam, over similar ground. We descended by a steep slope, dangerous for riding, into the valley of the Tema Tokpho, and crossed that river just above its confluence. Soon after, the great Burdun Gonpa appeared, where also objection was made to my admission; and, on approaching Padam, I had the great pleasure of seeing a few square miles of level ground which, though it was in great part covered with white stones, afforded much relief to a mind somewhat overburdened with precipice walls and gorges.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

ZANSKAR.

CAMPING-GROUND-PADAM-SECLUSIONS OF ZANSKAR-ITS PEOPLE

-AREA-ELEVATION-VALLEYS-A CURIOUS THEORY.

AT Padam we were told to camp in a very unsuitable place half a mile from the town, among fields which next morning were flooded with water; but I would not do so, and found a delightful camping-ground about a quarter of a mile to the west of the town, on a fine grassy terrace under the shelter of an immense rock, which completely protected us from the wind.

This capital of Zanskar may be called a town, or even a city, as matters go in the Himálaya, and was at least the largest village I had seen since leaving Shipki, in Chinese Tibet. It has a population of about 2000, and is the residence of a Thánadar, who governs the whole province as representative of the Maharaja of Kashmír, and who is supported by a small force of horse and foot soldiers. In the afternoon this Mohammedan official called, and presented a hazúr of Baltistan apricots, and said he would send a sowar or trooper with me to Súrú, in order to prevent any difficulty on the way. He was civil and agreeable, and was specially interested in my revolver; but I did not get much information out of him beyond learning that in winter the people of Padam were pretty well snowed-up in their houses; and, if that be the case there, at a height of only 11,373

feet, what must it be in the villages which are over 13,000 feet high?

No province could be much more secluded than Zanskar is. The tremendous mountains which bound it, the high passes which have to be crossed in order to reach it, and its distance (both linear and practical) from any civilised region, cut it completely off from the foreign influences which are beginning to affect some districts of even the Himálaya. There is a want of any progressive element in itself, and its Tibetan - Búdhist people are in opposition to the influence of Mohammedan Kashmir. It yields some small revenue to the Maharaja; but the authority of his officers and soldiers in it is very small, and they are there very much by sufferance. Is is the same in the Tibetan portion of Súrú; but when I got over the long, wild, habitationless tract which lies between the Ringdom monastery and the village of Súrú, among a population who were more Kashmirí and Mohammedan than Tibetan and Búdhist, I found an immense change in the relations between the people on the one hand and the soldiers on the other. The former were exceedingly afraid of the soldiers, and the latter oppressed the people very much as they pleased. There was nothing of that, however, visible in Zanskar, where the zemindars paid little respect to the soldiers, and appeared to manage the affairs of the country themselves, much as the zemindars do in other districts of the Himálaya which are entirely. free from Mohammedan control.

According to Cunningham, Zanskar has an area of 3000 square miles, and a mean elevation of 13,154 feet, as deduced from seven observations made along "the course of the valley;" but in no sense can it be correctly spoken of as one valley, for it is composed of three great valleys. Taking Padam as a centre, one of these runs up the course of the Tsarap Lingti which we

have just descended; another, which we are about to ascend, lies along the upper Zanskar river, up towards the Pense La and Súrú; while a third is the valley of the Zanskar river proper, which is formed by the junction of the two streams just mentioned: these, when conjoined, flow in a nearly northern direction towards the upper Indus. In shape, this province is something like the three legs of the Manx coat of arms. Its greatest length must be nearly ninety miles, and its mean. breadth must be over fifty; but this gives no idea of what it is to the traveller who has to follow the course of the rivers and meets with difficult ground. It took me ten marches to get from one end of Zanskar to the other; and no one with loaded coolies could have done it in less than nine. Thornton, in his gazetteer of the countries adjacent to India, describes it as lying between lat. 33°-34°, 30′, and long. 76°—77°, 20′; and he says of it, "this region not having been explored by any European, little is known concerning it, except that it is drained by a large stream called the river of Zanskar, which, rising near Labrang, on the southern frontier, and holding a northerly course of nearly a hundred miles, receives several tributaries, and joins the Indus on the left side, about twenty-five miles below Leh." It must, however, have been pretty well explored since his time, for the Trigonometrical Survey have measured a number of stations in this province, and I understand that the reason why the routes through it have not been published is a rather uncalled-for fear that it might be exposed to an influx of travellers too great for its scanty

resources.

Cunningham translates the name Zanskar, or rather "Zangs-kar," as "white copper" or brass;* but an

* Emil Schlagintweit, in his 'Die Könige von Tibet' (aus den Abhandlung der k. bayer, Akademie der W. I. Cl., x. B. iii., p. 802, München, 1866), makes the following remarks on the meaning of this name :-" Ein