VALLEY OF THE PARANG. 279 



when it was quite a relief to look down on a bit of dark- 

 blue water of the Tso Morari some 2000 feet below us, 

 cold and cheerless though it appeared as it lay amidst 

 mountains which were now draped in virgin snow almost 

 to its margin. 



The Major's luck with the rifle had been no better than 

 mine. To tell the truth, we were both getting a little tired 

 of toiling after game day after day from morning to night 

 over these desolate regions to so little purpose ; so next 

 morning we were not sorry to retrace our steps along the 

 shore of the lake, en route for the verdant and forest-clad 

 slopes of the Himalayas. On a marshy bit of ground, 

 near the end of the lake, I killed two specimens of the ruff. 

 Another British bird that we frequently saw up here was 

 the common magpie ; also that cosmopolitan bird, the 

 hoopoe. 



Next morning we forded the Parang, a turbid broken 

 flood of melted snow, which, as is usual with these capricious 

 snow-fed torrents of Tibet, was only passable at an early 

 hour. For three days we trudged up the valley of the 

 Parang, a seemingly endless narrow glen, totally destitute 

 of vegetation, and closely hemmed in by steep stony land- 

 slips and precipices of a brownish-yellow hue, rising stark 

 and gaunt one above another to a stupendous height, like 

 gigantic stair-steps, save where the V-shaped cleft of some 

 lateral gorge disclosed the broken termination of a glacier, 

 or a towering white mountain-summit. 



The Parang la, with its glaciers and perpetual snow, is 

 quite in keeping with the wild approaches to it on either 

 side. It is perhaps as savagely grand as any of the passes 

 that are ordinarily used as highways for crossing the 

 " divide " or backbone, as it were, of the Himalayan range 

 into Tibet, as well as being one of the highest and most 

 arduous to traverse. And certainly, from my experience of 

 it in September, when its difficulties are supposed to be at 

 their minimum, I can quite imagine it to be the latter. Its 



