FROM KASHMIR TO KUSSOWLIE. 117 



in winter, though the climate is cold, being 10,000 

 feet (they say) above the sea. In boiling water the 

 thermometer was only 188°. I never felt a more 

 exhilarating air. That one week quite set me ujj, 

 and I have been better ever since. The Llamas or 

 monks, with their red cardinals' hats and crimson 

 robes, look very imposing and monastic, quite a 

 travesty of the regular clergy, and they blow just 

 such trumpets as Fame does on monuments in 

 country churches. Jolly friars they are, and fat 

 to a man." 



After a week spent at Leh they crossed the 

 mountain ridge wdiich separates the two branches 

 of the Indus. Descendino- the northern or rig-ht 

 stream, they reached Iskardo, the capital of Bal- 

 tistan, or Little Tibet. This place Hodson charac- 

 terised as " a genuine humbug. In the middle of 

 a fine valley some 6000 feet above the sea, sur- 

 rounded by sudden-rising perpendicular mountains 

 6000 feet higher, stands an isolated rock washed by 

 the Indus, some two miles by three-quarters — a 

 little Gibraltar. The valley may be ten miles by 

 three, partially cultivated, and inhabited by some 

 two hundred scattered houses. There's Iskardo. 

 There tvas a fort on the rock, but that is orone. 

 and all, as usual in the East, bespeaks havoc : only 

 Nature is grand here. The people are Mussulmans 

 and not Bhots, and are more human-looking, but 

 not so well clad," 



Hodson was surprised to find Iskardo so much 

 hotter than he had expected. On August 25 the 

 thermometer in his tent rose to 92° — "a thing," he 

 says, "for which I cannot possibly account, as there 

 is snow now on all sides of us." 



