120 On the Road to Batang— 
Tsa-lei, situated at an altitude of nearly 13,000 feet, is 
built on the edge of a small mountain-flat which has evi- 
dently been formed by the silting up of a lake. Numerous 
torrents converging on to this grassy pocket have thrust 
out alluvial fans on which grow dense thickets of //zppophaé 
rhamnoides, a very characteristic formation, for this tree 
grows along all the more sluggish streams of S.E. Tibet, 
often in dense thickets. 
It felt very cold in the night at this altitude, for the 
huts were of pine logs with shingle roofs, such as the 
Lutzu build; indeed all up the Mekong valley, even. into 
Tibet itself, this style of architecture is adopted by the 
poorer people. 
Though we were up at five next morning we did not 
get off till nine, for all the animals were up in the moun- 
tains for the summer, and we had the utmost difficulty in 
securing two ponies and a yak. These ponderous yaks 
trudge along at a terribly slow pace, but they have their 
advantages in the summer at least, when swollen torrents 
have to be crossed. More than once I thought my pony 
would be swept away by the rush of water, when my feet 
were only just awash, but the stumpy-legged yak, though 
he dipped his loads every time, swept through the water 
like a snow-plough. 
The Garthok river, a tumultuous red flood flowing 
through an arid gorge, was reached just as a terrific rain- 
storm began, and though we continued our march till dark, 
the morning’s delay and a good deal of time wasted in 
changing the w/a at mid-day considerably curtailed the 
stage. Crossing the river by a most crazy wooden bridge 
we stopped for the night at a small village on the opposite 
bank, and were no sooner inside the nearest hut than it 
again began to pour with rain, continuing without inter- 
mission all night. 
After supper as I lay on my mattress in the tiny room 
allotted to me writing up my journal by the light of several 
pine-wood chips blazing on a stone, in stalked three Tibe- 
tans, all of them over six feet high. Their coarse gowns 
were tied up above their knees, the right shoulder thrust 
jauntily out exposing the deep muscular chest, and they 
were bootless. One of them carried a fiddle, consisting 
