402 W. T. Blanford — Journey through' Sikkim. [No. 4, 



high, or vertical, and as far as Yeomatong it is still considerable. 

 But at Moinay it is very low, and just below the village almost 

 horizontal. In the hills to the westward it dips to the west or 

 southwest at an angle rarely exceeding 10° to 20°. The gneiss 

 is in places granitoid, and often traversed by granite veins ; both 

 gneiss and granite consist chiefly of white felspar with but little 

 quartz and black mica. 



We selected for our tent a plot of grass in a position sheltered 

 from the wind ; our men finding places in some of the houses. 

 There were many people at Momay with their yaks when we arriv- 

 ed, but all left in a day or two afterwards for places lower down the 

 valley. 



\§th. We heard that a Tibetan officer had come to the Donkia 

 pass, which was about 10 miles away, to meet us, and we arranged 

 to go and see him on the following day. Meantime we resolved to 

 visit the Sibii-la, the pass which leads from Momay to Phaldng and 

 Tangu in the Lachen valley, in order to see if it was practicable for 

 coolies and if we could cross it in case the Tibetans would not allow us 

 to go over the Donkia-la. We had scarcely gone a mile when we met 

 a man who told us he had just seen a flock of wild sheep, and a sharp- 

 eyed shikari declared he could see some lying down upon a shoot 

 of stones. Neither Elwes nor I could distinguish them, even with 

 the telescope, but whilst we were watching, 16 burhel (Ovis nahura) 

 walked out from amongst the stones, and began feeding in a small 

 plain. Elwes crept in and shot the largest, a young ram. *It was 

 about the bulk of an English sheep, but with much longer legs, 

 and proved a grand addition to our larder. We subsequently 

 found that the " Ovis amnion" of which we had heard so much 

 were all burhel, and Hooker, I think, must have been mistaken 

 in supposing that he saw the former in this neighbourhood, for, 

 by the unanimous evidence of all the Tibetans, none occur to 

 the south of the Donkia and Kongra Lama passes, although they 

 are to be met with a little farther north in Tibet. 



Sending a man back with the burhel, which, I may remark, was 

 the only four-footed game secured by either of us during our trip, we 

 proceeded on our road to the Sibu-la, passing over the gigantic 

 moraine at the termination of the Kinchinjhao glacier, and climb- 



