I 



MY ANEROID AT FAULT. 311 



that you cannot see the river, although you can hear it roar- 

 ing sullenly down its narrow rocky channel some 2000 feet, 

 on an average, below. The track, which had not as yet been 

 repaired by the Bhotias, was narrow and broken, and in 

 many parts had been carried clear away by slips of earth 

 and snow, and broad beds of snow still lay hard, smooth, 

 and terribly steep in some of the gullies we crossed. 

 In such places we had ourselves to make it passable for the 

 jooboos, with tools we carried with us for the purpose. As 

 we went along we could sometimes see the summer 

 avalanches which are quite different from the more 

 destructive ones of the early spring coming tumbling 

 down the rocky gullies on the steep mountain-face across 

 the river; the streams of falling snow appearing in the 

 distance to descend quite slowly, though they were really 

 thundering down at a fearful rate. At one point we reached 

 an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet, just before descending 

 to Goting, which is about 13,000 feet. These altitudes 

 I ascertained by my mountain aneroid, which I had had 

 corrected at the headquarters of the great Trigonometrical 

 Survey of India, at Dehra Doon, before starting. Few 

 aneroids, however, if any, are to be much depended on 

 above 15,000 feet at most. Up to that height I found 

 mine wonderfully accurate at altitudes marked on the 

 Survey maps. Above this it played all kinds of jinks, 

 making the summit of the Niti pass, for instance, which is 

 well under 17,000 feet, to be over 20,000 feet; but on 

 again descending below 15,000 feet it resumed its normal 

 good behaviour. 



The camping-place of Goting is a small flat of green turf, 

 almost surrounded with abrupt scarps of earth overhanging 

 the river. A solitary clump of birch-trees growing on a 

 slope hard by afforded a plentiful supply of fuel for our 

 camp-fire. Some of these gaunt old specimens, with their 

 gnarled and crooked limbs, must have weathered the storms 

 of centuries. One or two grey old giants I measured in 



