424 THE NITI PASS. 



The animals had evidently come down to a salt-lick there is 

 here close by the wayside. The beast I had killed had most 

 conveniently fallen down on to the track, where we left him 

 for the men following with the jooboos to pick up. Through- 

 out the defile, which is several miles long, the river was then 

 covered over with a hard bed of snow, which made our pro- 

 gress there much easier than on our return, after the snow- 

 bed had disappeared, when the baggage -animals had to 

 scramble along the rocky steeps rising abruptly from the 

 river. We had some trouble, however, in circumventing one 

 or two awkward places where the snow had already fallen in 

 and left yawning holes disclosing the dark gurgling water tear- 

 ing along below. We stopped for that day at the head of the 

 defile, where the stony ground was clear of snow, and the 

 cold blast that blew down the gorge as if through a funnel 

 raised the dust in clouds and made it difficult to keep our 

 tents standing. Beyond this, for the ten or twelve miles 

 before reaching the summit of the pass, there is no difficulty 

 to speak of, and the scenery is grand though somewhat dreary 

 and monotonous. Across the river, on the south side, several 

 flocks of burrell containing some good rams were seen on the 

 steep slopes. We camped just below the short but pretty 

 stiff final ascent to the top of the ghat, in order to get over it 

 in the early morning before the snow became softened by the 

 heat of the sun. 



Starting very early, the crest was reached soon after sun- 

 rise. The view you get from it of Hundes is more striking 

 than beautiful. In the glaring picture before you there is an 

 absence of what a painter would call chiaro-oscuro ; not in its 

 literal sense by any means, for there is certainly no want of 

 light and shade, but in the harmonious blending of these 

 effects, which is, I think, the technical acceptation of the 

 term. The aerial perspective, too, looks almost unnatural in 

 its clearness. That mighty object of Hindoo veneration, the 

 Kailas peak, rising 22,000 odd feet, about a hundred miles 



