On This They Protested,
And Said, With A Significant Gesture, I Might Cut Their Throats If
They Cried Any More, And Begged Me To Try Them Again; And As We Had
No More Bad Weather, There Was No More Trouble.
The marches which followed were along valleys, plains, and mountain-
sides of gravel, destitute of herbage, except a shrivelled artemisia,
and on one occasion the baggage animals were forty hours without
food.
Fresh water was usually very scarce, and on the Lingti plains
was only obtainable by scooping it up from the holes left by the feet
of animals. Insect life was rare, and except grey doves, the 'dove
of the valleys,' which often flew before us for miles down the
ravines, no birds were to be seen. On the other hand, there were
numerous herds of kyang, which in the early mornings came to drink of
the water by which the camps were pitched. By looking through a
crevice of my tent I saw them distinctly, without alarming them. In
one herd I counted forty.
They kept together in families, sire, dam, and foal. The animal
certainly is under fourteen hands, and resembles a mule rather than a
horse or ass. The noise, which I had several opportunities of
hearing, is more like a neigh than a bray, but lacks completeness.
The creature is light brown, almost fawn colour, fading into white
under his body, and he has a dark stripe on his back, but not a
cross. His ears are long, and his tail is like that of a mule. He
trots and gallops, and when alarmed gallops fast, but as he is not
worth hunting, he has not a great dread of humanity, and families of
kyang frequently grazed within two hundred and fifty yards of us. He
is about as untamable as the zebra, and with his family
affectionateness leads apparently a very happy life.
On the Kwangchu plateau, at an elevation of 15,000 feet, I met with a
form of life which has a great interest of its own, sheep caravans,
numbering among them 7,000 sheep, each animal with its wool on, and
equipped with a neat packsaddle and two leather or hair-cloth bags,
and loaded with from twenty-five to thirty-two pounds of salt or
borax. These, and many more which we passed, were carrying their
loads to Patseo, a mountain valley in Lahul, where they are met by
traders from Northern British India. The sheep are shorn, and the
wool and loads are exchanged for wheat and a few other commodities,
with which they return to Tibet, the whole journey taking from nine
months to a year. As the sheep live by grazing the scanty herbage on
the march, they never accomplish more than ten miles a day, and as
they often become footsore, halts of several days are frequently
required. Sheep, dead or dying, with the birds of prey picking out
their eyes, were often met with. Ordinarily these caravans are led
by a man, followed by a large goat much bedecked and wearing a large
bell. Each driver has charge of one hundred sheep. These men, of
small stature but very thickset, with their wide smooth faces, loose
clothing of sheepskin with the wool outside, with their long coarse
hair flying in the wind, and their uncouth shouts in a barbarous
tongue, are much like savages. They sing wild chants as they picket
their sheep in long double lines at night, and with their savage
mastiffs sleep unsheltered under the frosty skies under the lee of
their piled-up saddlebags. On three nights I camped beside their
caravans, and walked round their orderly lines of sheep and their
neat walls of saddlebags; and, far from showing any discourtesy or
rude curiosity, they held down their fierce dogs and exhibited their
ingenious mode of tethering their animals, and not one of the many
articles which my servants were in the habit of leaving outside the
tents was on any occasion abstracted. The dogs, however, were less
honest than their masters, and on one night ran away with half a
sheep, and I should have fared poorly had not Mr. - shot some grey
doves.
Marches across sandy and gravelly valleys, and along arid mountain-
sides spotted with a creeping furze and cushions of a yellow-green
moss which seems able to exist without moisture, fords of the Sumgyal
and Tserap rivers, and the crossing of the Lachalang Pass at an
altitude of 17,500 feet in severe frost, occupied several uneventful
days. Of the three lofty passes on this route, the Toglang, which is
higher, and the Baralacha, which is lower, are featureless billows of
gravel, over which a carriage might easily be driven. Not so is the
Lachalang, though its well-made zigzags are easy for laden animals.
The approach to it is fantastic, among precipitous mountains of red
sandstone, and red rocks weathered into pillars, men's heads, and
numerous groups of gossipy old women from thirty to fifty feet high,
in flat hats and long circular cloaks! Entering by red gates of rock
into a region of gigantic mountains, and following up a crystal
torrent, the valley narrowing to a gorge, and the gorge to a chasm
guarded by nearly perpendicular needles of rock flaming in the
westering sun, we forded the river at the chasm's throat, and camped
on a velvety green lawn just large enough for a few tents, absolutely
walled in by abrupt mountains 18,000 and 19,000 feet in height. Long
after the twilight settled down on us, the pinnacles above glowed in
warm sunshine, and the following morning, when it was only dawn
below, and the still river pools were frozen and the grass was white
with hoar-frost, the morning sun reddened the snow-peaks and kindled
into vermilion the red needles of Lachalang. That camping-ground
under such conditions is the grandest and most romantic spot of the
whole journey.
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