TIBETAN FISH. 44*7 



up with the second barrel as they rose, floored a baker's 

 dozen of them, which, with eight I had secured the previous 

 evening in the same ignoble manner, kept me in pigeon-pies 

 for a week or more. The adage, " it never rains but it pours," 

 was exemplified when again I was aroused from my slumbers 

 by a messenger with yet another note. This one had been 

 sent by an officer of the great Trigonometrical Survey of 

 India, who with his party had arrived at our last camping- 

 place, after crossing the Untadhura pass from the province 

 of Kumaon. He was on his way, he told me, to fix his 

 survey stations on the highest points of the Lai Daka, with 

 a view to making observations from them of more distant, 

 and, to Europeans, almost unknown regions beyond the Sut- 

 lej. His letter contained a message respecting his progress 

 thus far, which he asked me to convey to his chief Colonel 

 J. T. Walker, RE., at Dehra Doon. I congratulated myself 

 on having finished my hunting operations on the Lai Daka 

 before he and his party commenced their scientific ones, 

 which, valuable as they most assuredly would be to geo- 

 graphical interests, were not likely to be conducive to those 

 of sport. 



Next day we sent our camp on a few miles, whilst Puddoo 

 and I took a beat over the broken slopes above, which turned 

 out blank. In the evening, however, we did some successful 

 fish-poaching at which my Goorkha servant proved an adept 

 in a stream that ran past the camp, by constructing a dam 

 to divert the course of the water above a shallow pool, the 

 result being about a dozen fish left high and dry. They 

 averaged five or six inches in length, and were coarse-headed, 

 and to all appearance scaleless, of a greyish colour above, 

 silvery below, and profusely covered with dark-grey spots. 

 Some of the streams in Tibet contain a prodigious number 

 of fish, and all, I believe, are good eating. Many of the 

 streams lose themselves in the sand, and appear again at 

 intervals, sometimes only in little pools of clear water. 



