A SUMMER IN HIGH ASIA. 



portion of it, seem a fairly healthy and cheery lot. 

 The females fly into their houses at the approach of 

 a stranger, or, if in the cornfields, throw themselves 

 on the ground and lie hidden among the crop, 

 though from what I saw, if this precaution is taken 

 because of their fatally attractive beauty, it is a 

 hardly necessary one. But to resume. After many 

 hours of such journeyings we at last reached the 

 foot of a steep ascent, at the top of which was 

 our destination, Olting-Thang. Already weary, we 

 started up this hill with a broiling sun full on our 

 backs and eventually reached the camping-ground, 

 quite ready to have a bath, eat the evening meal 

 (hardly to be dignified by the name of dinner when 

 it is over before sunset), and to turn in as soon as it 

 got dark. On the following day (June 2nd) we 

 reached the Indus Valley. Starting along the usual 

 boulder-strewn slope, but now at some considerable 

 height above the river, after about an hour's 

 journeying, we came to a high corner above the 

 place where the Dras River joins the Indus. I 

 looked with some curiosity on this, my first view of 

 the famous valley. The river itself was in no wise 

 like the comparatively clear mountain torrent of .the 

 Dras stream, but flowed onwards in a swift, if 

 somewhat sullen, volume of mud-coloured water. 

 At this season the snows are melting rapidly, and a 

 large quantity of sand and mud is swept down from 

 the deserts of Thibet to make the fertile plains of 

 the distant Punjab. If we filled a tumbler with the 



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