CHAPTER VIII. 



THE following day we descended the Polakonka 

 Pass (H. having to leave most of his camp behind 

 until his ponies, which had been enticed away 

 during the night by the kyang, had been re- 

 captured) and arrived at Puga. This encampment 

 is situated in a basin of green turf, watered by a 

 stream, and has a small population, who work the 

 sulphur and borax, which they here dig out of the 

 hillside, and after, as far as we could make out, 

 boiling it in roughly-made cauldrons (Moorcroft 

 says with a sort of suet), pack it in small bags, and 

 send it down to India on the backs of sheep, each 

 of which latter carries two bags slung panier-wise. 

 Ramzahn told me that these sheep have the fat cut 

 out of their flanks when alive (perhaps to make the 

 afore-mentioned suet), so that they may be the betteV 

 carriers ; they certainly looked very thin ! At Puga 

 we halted for a day, and H. and I explored the 

 hills to south in search of goa, but saw none. I 

 climbed into a very narrow and high ravine 

 to the westward, but though I made my way 

 right up to a glacier, some five miles up it, saw 



1/9 N~ 2 



