110 On the Road to Batang— 
flowers in existence, several Primulas, and a number of 
highly adapted plants inhabiting the screes and the icy 
puddles of water which trickled from the melting snow. 
Two varieties of Lzlzum lophophorum found on the 
alpine grass-land at 14,000—16,000 feet were peculiar in that 
the corolla was pendent, with the tips of the petals cohering, 
but the fruit erect. These flowers open in the rainiest 
month, and the reason for their being pendent may well be 
to preserve the honey and pollen, to which insects have 
access through the slits between the corolla lobes. The 
fruit, on the other hand, ripens during the dry autumn, and 
stands erect on a resilient pedicel, the winged seeds being 
shaken out in the gales and carried far and wide. This 
arrangement of pendent or horizontal flowers is very con- 
spicuous in the summer flora, especially on the very 
wet Salween-Mekong watershed (e.g. Primula Soulzez, 
Meconopsis pseudointegrifolia, etc.); but the autumn flowers 
on the Yang-tze-Mekong watershed (saxifrages, gentians 
and so on) stand erect, so that I regard it as an adaptation 
to meet climatic conditions. 
From the time the snow disappears towards the end 
of May till the grass withers and winter sets in about the 
end of September, the herdsmen camp in the high moun- 
tain valleys, fattening their flocks of sheep and yak on 
the rich alpine grass-land, from 14,000 to 16,000 feet above 
sea-level. Once or twice Gan-ton and I had been caught 
in heavy rain storms when high up in the alpine pastures, 
and had resorted to these herdsmen’s tents for shelter and 
refreshment. 
A small ridge-tent of brown hemp cloth, the sides 
pegged down and weighted with stones, one end built 
against a rock or stuffed up with branches, the other open 
to the winds—this is the home of the Tibetan herdsmen 
for four months of the year, while his food consists of 
tsamba, tea, butter, and sour milk. There is just enough 
room for three or four to squat cross-legged round the fire 
in the middle, which fills the tent with pungent smoke. 
The remaining space is occupied by the leather bags of 
tsamba, the wooden cylinders for making tea, and the 
wooden milk-pails, so dirty with clotted curds that, as 
I have already said, milk drawn into them rapidly turns 
