Across the China-Tibet Frontier 135 
the duties of the inn-keeper, scale of pay, and so on; and 
on presenting my w/a passport I had no difficulty in getting 
a change of ponies. What was set forth on my passport 
‘I cannot say, for even had I been able to read Chinese it 
was quite illegible; but attached to it were two small 
squares of paper, on one of which was depicted in crude 
outline a yak, on the other a pony or mule, both bearing 
official stamps ; so that the meaning was sufficiently plain, 
the pictures speaking for themselves. 
In the well-wooded valley of the Garthok river hares 
were numerous, and not having my gun with me, I amused 
myself by trying to shoot them with the soldier’s rifle, but 
met with no success though they were ridiculously tame, 
merely pricking up their ears and running a few yards 
after each report. A hare for supper would certainly have 
been a godsend just then, as I had had nothing but eggs 
and bacon for several days—perhaps that was why I could 
not shoot straight. The river twisted and twined through 
the valley in serpentine fashion, sometimes overflowing the 
grassy flood-plain but often enclosed by cliffs of red earth 
as much as twenty feet high, river terraces being well 
defined in places. At nightfall we waded through a foot 
of mud to the squalid village of Chia-ta-tih only about ten 
miles short of Garthok, and the four of us were herded 
together into a single-roomed hut already occupied by a 
large family. For the first half of the night an old man 
droned “ Om mani padme hum” till he finally prayed him- 
self to sleep, and for the second half two babies kept up a 
continuous coughing and spitting, which was scarcely sur- 
prising considering that their dress consisted of one goatskin 
garment apiece, while the altitude was about 10,000 feet, 
so that even in summer, owing to the continual rain, the 
air was very chilly. 
Above Chia-ta-tih, which I found next morning to 
consist of half-a-dozen hovels built of rough logs or of 
stones insecurely plastered together with mud, and a 
lamasery with fifteen or twenty priests, the valley begins 
to open out on to the plateau, and forest ceases. The 
valley floor, affording the richest grazing ground imaginable 
for large flocks of yak, sheep, and ponies, reaches a breadth 
of 300 to 400 yards, and the brilliant green grass is 
