234 CHANGCHENMO. 



increased them. The Tartars, however, drink quantities of 

 chung, the weak spirit of the country, distilled from a kind 

 of barley called grim, which, they say, answers the same 

 purpose. It has a sweetish and not altogether unpleasant 

 taste. In the more northern Himalayas, eating raw onions 

 is said by the natives to mitigate these disagreeable sensa- 

 tions. And here I may offer a bit of advice : never cross a 

 high pass on an empty stomach. 



We camped beside the Changchenmo river a tributary 

 of the Shy ok which flows over its wide shingly bed 

 between bare, brown, stony slopes, surmounted with pre- 

 cipitous heights of the reddish and ochreous hues often 

 so conspicuous in the colouring of the mountains in this 

 strange land. Hereabout, growing on the sand-hills beside 

 the river, we were surprised and delighted to find plenty 

 of fuel in the shape of a kind of tamarisk called oomloo, 

 which was so dry and inflammable that we had only to put 

 a match to a big bush for the strong wind to at once set 

 it ablaze and keep it smouldering away for hours, always 

 taking care it was to leeward of our tents. 



We now learnt from two Tartars left in charge of supplies 

 belonging to the sportsmen ahead of us, that their masters 

 were, as we expected, in possession of the best hunting 

 localities. After a conference with Changter, he suggested 

 that we should proceed up another long glen north of 

 Changchenmo, named Kugrang, which he said was usually 

 a pretty sure find for wild yaks. The Tartars had in- 

 formed us that one of the sportsmen was hunting some- 

 where about the head of this glen ; but as Changter said 

 it was more than twenty miles in length, and that there 

 were one or two long lateral branches leading out of it, 

 we considered that our each occupying one of these would 

 not be poaching. The Major accordingly decided on taking 

 up his quarters in one of them, whilst I did the same in 

 another. 



In order to reach our ground, it was necessary to cross 



