150 LADAK. 



health of that unfortunate quadruped which by his state- 

 ment is alive, but in a bad way, lying down and eating 

 nothing. I fancy something definite will be known 

 to-morrow. 



13th July. I started at dawn with not very pleasant 

 anticipations of my day's work, expecting very hard 

 walking in a barren stony country, with hardly a chance 

 of sport. And so it turned out. We ascended hills, and 

 traversed table lands, and peered into gullies right and 

 left, but saw not a glimpse of game : so, after some three 

 hours and a half of this unsatisfactory toil, we descended 

 to a stream on the road, hard by where I shot the cow ; 

 there breakfasted, and returned to camp. 



We again passed some of those curious Buddhist 

 erections long, oblong, tomb-shaped piles. There were 

 two about fifty yards long each, with an interval of some 

 thirty yards. The tops were slightly slanted from the 

 centre, and covered with the smooth, flat, water-worn 

 stones, except a few yards left to be filled in by them. 

 These stones were all inscribed with figures, or Thibetan 

 characters ; and I endeavoured to ascertain from the two 

 native attendants, through the interpretation of the 

 shikarries, the meaning of the inscriptions, and the object 

 with which they were so placed. But my gleanings were 

 very scanty, the shikarries having but a limited stock of 

 Hindostani phrases, not a general knowledge of the 

 language, and only a few words of Thibetan. But thus 

 much I made out ; that every stone was similar in its 

 inscription, bearing the words as well as I can letter the 

 sounds Mani, Pani, Pudma-hoo which I understood to 

 be one of the titles of their divinity, and that these en- 

 graved stones were thus presented as an oblation and 

 offering acceptable to their god being an act of faith 

 and devotion from which as a consequence prosperity is 



