490 



NA TURE 



[Marc/i 25, 1886 



and proved to be the most important of all the affluents of 

 the Baroli ; it drains much of the area which has hitherto 

 been assigned to the Khrii. Colonel Woodthorpe main- 

 tains that some confusion appears to have existed in the 

 public mind as to the proper application of the names 

 Abor and Daphla, for whereas it is believed that " the 

 Daphlas always tattoo but the Abors never," just the re- 

 verse is the case. "Abor" is, however, a very vague 

 appellative, and among the Assamese themselves means 

 only a " foreigner." It is applied equally to tribes in the 

 Aka, Daphla, Miri, Mishmi, and Naga Hills, and is only 

 acknowledged by the so-called Abors themselves out of 

 deference to the ignorance of those who, they believe, would 

 fail to recognise them under any other name. 



The survey of Independent Sikkim, in which Captain 

 Harman's life was nobly sacrificed, has now been com- 

 pleted by his quondam assistant Mr. Robert. Returning 

 from the northerti frontiers of Sikkim, Mr. Robert has 

 brought the unlooked-for intelligence that there are no 

 great glaciers in the valleys to the north-east of Kinchin- 

 jinga, though situated on the shady side of peaks and 

 ridges ascending as high as 28,000 feet, and nowhere under 

 20,000 feet ; masses of glacial ice and neve skirt the lower 

 slopes of the mountains, but without protruding into the 

 valleys, and as a rule the enormous mass of snow deposited 

 on these mountains — which are among the highest on the 

 surface of the earth — is either evaporated where it falls or 

 is melted and carried oft" by the Lachen and other feeders 

 of the Teesta, without having first passed into the state of 

 glaciers such as pervade the entire length of many of the 

 valleys of the North-West Himalayas, near the junction 

 with the Hindu Kush Range, where the mountains are 

 lower, but the annual rainfall is much less. ' 



The Survey operations confirm the general accuracy of 

 the admirable sketch-map constructed by Sir Joseph 

 Hooker upwards of thirty years previously, which has 

 bsen our only reliable map of Sikkim up to the present 

 time, and which still represents the limits of the geogra- 

 phical knowledge acquired by Europeans beyond the 

 frontiers of Sikkim ; the ofiicers of the Survey have not 

 been able to penetrate further north than he did, nor do 

 more than see, as he saw, without fixing, the peaks of the 

 great Tibetan ranges beyond ; all new geography in Tibet 

 is wholly due to the native explorers. 



CoIonelTannergives an interestingaccountof thejourney 

 of one of these explorers, " the Lama," through portions of 

 Southern Tibet and the northern borders of Bhutan; an 

 excellent map is attached in illustration. The Lama 

 travelled round the entire circumference of the famous 

 Yamdok Lake — lat. 20"^ by long. 90° 45' — which was visited 

 by D'Anville in 1735 and by Manning in 181 1, and forms 

 such a prominent object in all maps of Tibet ; he found it 

 considerably larger than has hitherto been conjectured, 

 the circumference being 120 miles excluding and 180 miles 

 including the bends of the shore. There are numerous 

 townsand villages onitsbanks,alarge population, andmuch 

 cultivation. It is sometimes called Piahte, or PAlti, after 

 a neighbouring town, but most commonly the Yamdok-tso 

 or Scorpion Lake, because its shape resembles that of a 

 scorpion ; the tail points eastwards towards the K^r-md- 

 sing, " the starry plains," or " plains of heaven," a delight- 

 ful and far-reaching extent of sward on which graze 

 thousands of cattle, horses, and beasts of the chase ; the 

 two claws point to the west, and almost encircle a penin- 

 sular mountain tract, on which there are some villages 

 and an important monastery. The south claw partially 

 encircles an inner lake — the Dumu-tso— which is 500 

 feet higher than the main lake, and has a circumference of 

 24 miles, and is regarded by the Tibetans with great awe, 

 fear, and superstition. There is an idea that some day 

 Tibet is doomed to be flooded and all animal life 

 destroyed by the overflow of this lake, and prayers are 

 constantly being offered up in the surrounding monasteries 

 to avert the catastrophe. Earthquakes, landslips, and 



convulsions, accompanied by subterraneous noises, are 

 said to be of constant occurrence, and the waters are 

 reputed to be steadily rising, notwithstanding the prayers 

 constantly offered by the monks to turn away the wrath 

 of the demon of Dumu-tso, who is believed to be confined 

 below the waters. 



The Yamdok Lake drains westwards into the Yaru- 

 sanpo or Upper Brahmaputra River, through a valley 

 which lies parallel to the river but slopes in the opposite 

 direction. Colonel Tanner points out that this is a general 

 feature in the drainage of Southern Tibet, all the principal 

 feeders of the Sanpo running for the greater length of their 

 courses in a contrary direction to the great river itself. 

 The Lama was informed that the lake occasionally falls 

 to so low a level that it receives water from the Sanpo, 

 but this seems scarcely possible, for on the occasion of his 

 visit it stood 1600 feet above the .Sanpo at the point of 

 junction with the drainage channel — as shown by his 

 boiling-point observations — and even then the flow of the 

 current in the channel was not particularly remarkable. 

 It not unfrecpiently happens in analysing the work of the 

 native explorers that the facts deducible from their own 

 observations, which they are taught to make accurately 

 but not to reduce, prove some of the tales they have been 

 told by the people of the country to be fictions. 



To the south of the Yamdok the Lama discovered a 

 new lake, called the Pho-mo-chang-thang [lit. man and 

 wife of the high plain), at a height exceeding 16,000 feet, 

 embosomed in lofty mountains and having no outlet. The 

 range to its south is a portion of the great water-parting 

 between India and Tibet ; the Lama crossed it by the 

 Menda Pass, 17,450 feet high, and then descended the 

 nonh-west branch of the Lhobra River to Lhd-khdng 

 Jong (lat. 28" 5', long. 91° 5', height 9500 feet), where he 

 saw the Lhobra River flowing to the south towards 

 Bhutan through a deep gorge. Colonel Tanner says this 

 river must be one of the largest, if not the very largest, 

 feeder of the Monas, but we know so little of Bhutan that 

 it is hard to say which of the streams crossed lower down 

 by Pemberton is the Lhobra. Leaving Lha-kh;ing Jong the 

 Lama ascended the north-east branch of the Lhobra River, 

 and again crossing the great water-parting — at the Shar- 

 kha-leb Pass, i6,Soo feet — returned to Tibet, his ddtour 

 to the south having taken him over much ground that 

 was entirely new to geography. Our limits do not allow 

 us to devote more space to his travels, which are very 

 interesting and valuable, — a satisfactory evidence of the 

 advantages which the Indian Survey derives from its 

 utilisation of Asiatic employes to explore regions into 

 which Europeans are not allowed to penetrate. 



Colonel Tanner is an artist as well as a geographer, and 

 his reports contain much picturesque description, in addi- 

 tion to necessarily dry detail. He was employed for some 

 years in the Western Himalayas, around Gilgit, and in the 

 neighbourhood of several very high mountains, including 

 the great Nanga Parbat and the sharp-pinnacled Raki- 

 poshi ; and he gives an interesting comparison of the 

 aspects of these mountains with those of the Eastern 

 Himalayas, showing that the latter are less striking, though 

 they are the higher, and include Everest, 29,000 feet, the 

 highest peak yet measured on the surface of the globe ; 

 their bases are more elevated, and thus the surfaces of 

 snow which they expose to view rise into the sky to a less 

 height above their surroundings. He says of Everest 

 that the outline is rather tame than otherwise, and that 

 Makalu— 27,890 feet high, and 12 miles south-east of 

 Everest— is the finest peak yet fixed in the Eastern Hima- 

 layas, with the exception of Kinchinjinga, 28,160 feet. 

 The fact is that Everest lies some distance to the north of 

 the main line of peaks, and the view of it from the south- 

 east, south, south-west, and west-south-west is shut out by 

 more prominent peaks which, though lower in height, are 

 nearer the point of view accessible to Europeans, and are 

 also less lowered by the earth's curvature than the more 



