322 A CHEERLESS MORNING. 



servant trying to effect an entrance through the fresh-fallen 

 snow that had drifted up thickly about it, and on looking 

 out, to my astonishment I saw nothing but one white waste 

 of snow that had fallen nearly a foot deep during the night. 

 The hillsides were shrouded in mist, and snow was still 

 falling, altogether about as cold and dreary a prospect as 

 one could behold. Our poor yaks presented a most pitiful 

 appearance as they stood helplessly chewing the cud of de- 

 spondence, being entirely dependent for food for they will 

 not eat grain on the small amount of vegetation which was 

 now buried in snow. Even a pair of big ravens that croaked 

 lugubriously about the camp, on the look-out for stray scraps 

 of meat, looked more than usually sad, as they sat there with 

 their sable plumes all ruffled from the cold. 



Crossing the pass that day was completely out of the ques- 

 tion, both on account of the thick mist and the snow that our 

 men reported to be knee-deep on the track a short distance 

 higher up. Fortunately for us, a quantity of boortze 1 had 

 been collected here in readiness for Captain Basevi and his 

 party, who were coming into Changchenmo, or we should 

 have been wellnigh frozen. 



The Major had pitched his little tent inside the stone en- 

 closure of the refuge, where, although better protected than 

 mine, it still was half buried in snow. Instead of turning 

 out in the cold as I had done, he had more wisely kept under 

 his blankets, where he snugly snoozed until breakfast-time. 

 By way of trying to keep warm, I went into one of the stone- 

 built recesses, where several of our Tartars were crouching 

 round a small grass-root fire, and was considerably edified 

 by watching them cooking and despatching their morning 

 repast. 



1 Boortze is a kind of plant not unlike an exaggerated bunch of Alpine 

 Edelweiss, with large, thick, dry roots. It grows in tufts, sparsely scattered 

 over the stony ground, and is found almost everywhere where vegetation 

 exists at all in Tibet, and is the principal, and often the only, fuel procur- 

 able. 



