36 S. E. Teal— Notes of a trip up the Billing. [No. 1, 



Ere leaving, one of tbem gave me a little knife such as they use to 

 cut their Sali with, and in return I gave several of them little tin boxes with 

 beads of various kinds, and bugles. Of course the guns and telescopes were 

 sources of wonderment as usual, and they went away after giving me an 

 invite to their future village, if I again came this way. The evening 

 brought one of the grandest sights I ever saw in my life. The gorgeous 

 effect of the sunset on the hills, and the snows especially, was simply inde- 

 scribable. It was heightened by the contrast of the intense blue-greens, 

 blues, and purple, of the lower ranges as they passed into shade, while the 

 upper snow covered ridges and peaks were in a blaze of pink and golden 

 sunlight. The sky behind being a clear and pale emerald green grey. The 

 Asamese who were eating their dinner, came and stared at it, and variously 

 expressed their admiration of a " snow mountain," which till now they had 

 none of them seen. The snowed peaks retained for some time, a clear grey 

 light that enabled the telescope to be used on them, long after all detail 

 in the valley was merged in darkness. At night we heard a tiger hunting 

 over the plain, and also elephants first to the north-west and then north- 

 east and next day saw where they had ascended the Mbong yang plateau 

 near where the cliff ends, close to us. 



To-day at 9 a. m. I found the water boil at 210'10 by two tubes of 

 B. P. thermometer, the air being 56° and we had fog till about 10 A. M. 

 It is a pity there is no good site near for a camp opposite the mouth of 

 the valley at 400 or 500 feet up as we should then see the hills over the 

 fog. " Kumku nong" says that eight years ago, he was up east of Dapha 

 Bum, near Mailam Bum, and camped for some ten days at a flat called 

 " Mailam yang," which the others had heard of. By his account it is a 

 high and comparatively flat tract, at the head waters of the Shi kha and 

 near a route, from Bramakhund side to the Mung lang and Bor Kamti 

 Shans and Kunungs, called the " Noi kong-isong" bat. He places this 

 tableland (not large) at east-north-east of Dapha Bum. 



If this be plotted on M. Desgodin's map, (Pro. A. S. B., 1880, Litho. 

 1881,) it should fall uncommonly near the boundary of Djrouba, the south- 

 west corner of the boundary of eastern Tibet, which is there placed in the 

 corner between the upper tributaries of the Mli kha branch of the Irrawadi ; 

 and the Brahmaputra (a little north of the Gulm thi). 



I had (so far) considered the range encircling the Mli kha valley on 

 the north, as very high and ending in the peak called Nam yen, (on Wil- 

 cox's map) and as an impassable barrier, with some high peaks rising per- 

 haps to 20,000 feet on it. 



If, however, it turns out (as it now seems likely) that the Mli kha, 

 where these " Kunungs" live, drains the southern edge of a high plateau 

 around which there is probably a range, it may be true what one of the 



