LEH, LADAK. 299 



orchard of apricot-trees, where charming little double roses, 

 of the most brilliant saffron-yellow, are blooming luxuriantly. 

 This little oasis, like the few others we have passed here and 

 there on our way, has been reclaimed from the surrounding 

 parched wilderness by being irrigated with water carried for 

 many miles in a small duct, cut along the bare mountain-side 

 from some distant stream or spring. 



After a weary tramp of twenty days from Cashmere, we 

 reach the town of Leh. Its most prominent features are 

 a fortified palace, so called, from the top of which we get 

 a good view of the place and its environs ; and a rather 

 imposing bazaar, where furs, precious stones, and other 

 commercial products of Eastern Turkestan freely change 

 hands. In its immediate vicinity are a few poplar-groves 

 and fruit - orchards, their vivid green contrasting rather 

 strangely with the surrounding sterile plateau, which extends 

 for miles towards the equally arid mountains that enclose it. 

 Regarding this town, little more need be said here than that 

 there, at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet, the sun burns 

 .with an intensity that is truly surprising, the thermometer 

 in summer often reaching 140 degrees or more in its rays ; 

 whilst the temperature in the shade is quite cold, and at night 

 often freezing. The patient reader who may have accom- 

 panied me so far, had now better go no farther unless he is 

 prepared to traverse some pretty high and rough country ere 

 he reaches Changchenmo, which has little to recommend it 

 beyond its being a favourite haunt of the wild yak and other 

 Tibetan game. 



Thus far I had had the pleasure of travelling from Cashmere 

 with an old friend and schoolmate Captain Basevi, B.E., 

 who was proceeding to carry out certain scientific obser- 

 vations on the highly elevated table-lands, which are among 

 the principal geographical features of this part of Tibet, and 

 were peculiarly suitable for his purpose. 1 But from Leh our 



1 These operations, which were intended, I believe, for determining the 



