FROM TONKIN TO INDIA 



of them are improvised on tlie spur of the moment, the two 

 semi-choruses engaging- in an extempore encounter of wits, hke 

 a more or less literary joust, where the art lies in catching a fleeting 

 cadence or a rhyme. 



On the 30th (August) Roux returned from Atentse : the loss 

 of a mule, the drowning of poor little dog " Pinaud," who seeing 

 his master crossing by a rope bridge tried to follow him by 

 swimming the river, and a night alarm with a panther in a 

 barn, formed the only incidents of his excursion. He had sighted 

 the three snow peaks of Dokerla (stone ladder), with its fine 

 glaciers on the right bank of the Mekong, and estimated their 

 height to be about 17,875 feet. Dokerla is a sacred mountain 

 of Thibet, to which a pilgrimage is made in the year of the 

 sheep, i.e. every twelfth year, and, as it happened to tall at this 

 time, the " Doctor " had met many folk from Tsarong. The 

 women he described as wearing over their tchaupas a sleeveless 

 frock-tunic of poulou stuff, with horizontal stripes in brown, blue, 

 and white. In their hair was a silver disc tor ornament. 



Atents(^ is a little town of three hundred families, perched 

 at an altitude of 10,725 feet, and, being one of the gates between 

 China and Thibet, holds a position of some commercial importance. 

 A portion of its inhabitants settled there from Chan-si more than 

 five hundred years ago. 



Trade consists in : — 



Musk : eight or ten mule loads per annum, sold at seven times 

 its weiorht in silver. 



Ouaulien : a root used as a tincture and a drug, brought from 

 Dzayul, and sold at forty taels the load. 



Gold : in small quantities, sold at eighteen times its weight in 



silver. 



242 



