1871.] W. T. Blanforcl — Journey through Sihhim. 405 



On the 19th I went to the Kinchinjhao glacier. This remark- 

 able mass of ice absolutely loses itself at its foot under piles of 

 stones, over which I climbed for more than a mile before I came to 

 any ice, and then I only found some exposed beneath a pile of 

 angular blocks of rock in consequence of the surface having fallen 

 in, I suppose from the melting of the ice beneath. It is evident 

 that some of the hills of moraine debris, such as those to the 

 northwest of Momay, have been formed in this manner, at the 

 termination of glaciers. 



September 20tL We moved our camp about 5 miles up the 

 Lachung valley, hoping to be able to cross the Donkia pass next 

 day, and encamped at a fork at nearly 17000 feet, where some 

 yaks had been kept earlier in the year, and an abundance of their 

 dried dung supplied fuel. Elwes, who at first had apparently 

 escaped the effects of the leech bites better than I had, but who 

 had been walking much more than I, now found himself rather 

 lame from their effects, and he therefore remained behind at our 

 new camp whilst I rode up to the Donkia pass again. I found 

 the tents of the Tibetans still closer to the crest of the pass than 

 before, indeed they were not more than 200 feet below the top, 

 on the Sikkim side. I was received by an officer in a yellow silk 

 dress, and wearing a conical Chinese hat, capped by a white glass 

 button, the mark of his rank. This was Sona-wandje, the Suba 

 or governor of Kambajong, and by far the best specimen of a 

 Tibetan gentleman whom we met. He was very polite, but per- 

 fectly firm on the point of giving us no permission to cross the fron- 

 tier ; he produced letters which he said had been sent to him from 

 Chiimbi, Jigatzi and Lhassa, ordering him on no account to permit 

 us to enter Tibetan territory.* An enquiry as to how information of 

 our journey had been received elicited the fact that it had come from 

 Chiimbi, and coupling this with a previous remark of the Siiba's that 

 he had recently received a letter from the governor of that province 

 requesting him to shew us every attention, it appeared to me high- 



* I am inclined to believe that orders had really arrived to stop us. The 

 Tibetans had heard that one European had visited the passes in the spring, 

 and that two others were on their way to them, and so unusual a visitation, 

 in a place in which no white man had been seen for more than 20 years, had 

 alaimied the celestials. 



