349 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
** Just above 15,000 feet all the plants are new; but the moment 
you reach the table-land, nine-tenths of them disappear; and on the 
almost bare earth, a Potentilla, Ranunculus, Morina, Cyananthus, a 
Grass, and a Carex are nearly all the vegetation that is seen. There 
is no Dama (Caragana) nor shrubby Astragalus in this part of 
Thibet, as in the north-west; and the Trichaurus, which is found at 
12—13,000 feet on the Indian approaches to Thibet, did not ascend to 
the top of the Pass. Still, as 1 always expected, at the turning-point, 
where the alpine Himalayan vegetation is to be soon replaced by 
Thibetan sterility, there is a sudden change in the Flora, and develop- 
ment of species which are not found further south, at equal altitudes in 
the Himalaya. For example, I gathered ten Astragali in the last five 
miles, and eight Ranunculi, six species of Pedicularis, several Fumarie 
and Potentilla, all new to me, and at between 14,500 and 15,500 feet. 
We made a fire of yak-dung, dried, and blew it up with bellows of 
goat-skin, armed with a snout of yak’s horn. My poor shivering 
Lepchas were benumbed with cold, and I gave them my cloak, for I 
always go thickly clad. I staid an hour and a half on the Thibetan 
side of the frontier, and I got good barometrical observations, and 
others with boiling water ; but the latter is infinitely the more trouble- 
some process. 
* On our return the weather cleared magnificently, and the views I 
obtained of the great mountains above named, rising almost perpen- 
dicularly, excelled anything I ever beheld. For 6,000 feet they rise 
sheer up, and loom through the mist over head, their black wall-like 
faces patched with ice, and their tabular tops capped with a bed of 
green snow—I am afraid to say how thick, but I should guess between 
two and three hundred feet in thickness. Southerly, down the glen, 
the mountains sank to low hills, to rise again, in the parallel of the 
great chain, twenty miles south, to perpetual snow in rugged peaks. 
We stopped again for a few minutes at Peppin’s tents, to get some tea; 
and at dusk I took horse, for, alas! I am quite blind in the dark. The 
stubborn, intractable, unshod Tartar pony which I rode, never missed 
a foot: sharp rocks, deep stony torrents, slippery paths, and pitch- 
darkness, made no difference to him. Except when in movement, 
these ponies are sorry-looking beasts; but the Singtam Soubah, who 
weighs full sixteen stone, rode his down the whole thirty miles of 
rocks, stones, streams, and mountains ; and except to stop and shake 
