250 A CHEERLESS MORNING. 



of snow that had fallen nearly a foot deep during the night. 

 The hillsides were shrouded in mist, and snow was still 

 falling, altogether about as cold and dreary a prospect as 

 one could behold. Our poor yaks presented a most pitiful 

 appearance as they stood helplessly chewing the cud of de- 

 spondence, being entirely dependent for food for they will 

 not eat grain on the small amount of vegetation which was 

 now buried in snow. Even a pair of big ravens that croaked 

 lugubriously about the camp, on the look-out for stray scraps 

 of meat, looked more than usually sad, as they sat there 

 with their sable plumes all ruffled from the cold. 



Crossing the pass that day was completely out of the 

 question, both on account of the thick mist and the snow 

 that our men reported to be knee-deep on the track a short 

 distance higher up. Fortunately for us, a quantity of 

 loortze x had been collected here in readiness for Captain 

 Basevi and his party, who were coming into Changchenmo, 

 or we should have been wellnigh frozen. 



The Major had pitched his little tent inside the stone 

 enclosure of the refuge, where, although better protected 

 than mine, it still was half buried in snow. Instead of 

 turning out in the cold as I had done, he had more wisely 

 kept under his blankets, where he snugly snoozed until 

 breakfast-time. By way of trying to keep warm, I went 

 into one of the stone-built recesses, where several of our 

 Tartars were crouching round a small grass-root fire, and 

 was considerably edified by watching them cooking and 

 despatching their morning repast. 



To begin with, a very dirty copper vessel was put on the 

 fire and filled with some green weed like nettles, barley- 

 flour, and water. Whilst one of the men stirred this pottage 



1 Boortze is a kind of plant not unlike an exaggerated bunch of Alpine 

 Edelweiss, with large, thick, dry roots. It grows in tufts, sparsely scattered 

 over the stony ground, and is found almost everywhere where vegetation 

 exists at all in Tibet, and is the principal, and often the only, fuel procurable, 



