126 DONKIA PASS. Chap. XXTT. 



Teshoo Loombo. I did not see it, but a long, stony moun- 

 tain range above the town is very conspicuous, its sides 

 presenting an interrupted line of cliffs, resembling the port- 

 holes of a ship : some fresh fallen snow lay at the base, but 

 none at the top, which was probably 18,500 feet high. 

 The banks of the Aran are thence inhabited at intervals 

 all the way to Tingre, where it enters Nepal. 



Donkia rises to the eastward of the pass, but its top is 

 not visible. I ascended (over loose rocks) to between 

 19,000 and 20,000 feet, and reached vast masses of blue 

 ribboned ice, capping the ridges, but obtained no further 

 prospect. To the west, the beetling east summit of Kin- 

 chinjhow rises at two miles distance, 3000 to 4000 feet 

 above the pass. A little south of it, and north of Chango 

 Khang, the view extends through a gap in the Sebolah 

 range, across the valley of the Lachen, to Kinchinjunga, 

 distant forty-two miles. The monarch of mountains looked 

 quite small and low from this point, and it was difficult to 

 believe it was 10,000 feet more lofty than my position. J 

 repeatedly looked from it to the high Tibetan mountains in 

 the extreme north-west distance, and was more than ever 

 struck with the apparently immense distance, and conse- 

 quent altitude of the latter : I put, however, no reliance on 

 such estimates. 



To the south the eye wandered down the valley of the 



taken with gre.at care) that capital is in latitude 29° 4' 20" north, or only 

 seventy miles north of Donkia ; and as the yak travels at the rate of sixteen 

 miles a day, the country must be extraordinarily rugged, or the valleys tortuous. 

 Turner took eight or nine days on his journey from Phari to Teshoo Loombo, 

 a distance of only eighty miles; yet he is quoted as an authority for the fact 

 of Tibet being a plain ! he certainly crossed an undulating country, probably 

 16,000 to 17,000 feet high; a continuation eastwards of the Cholamoo features, 

 and part of die same mountain range that connects Chumulari and Donkia : he had 

 always lofty mountains in sight, and rugged ones on either side, after he had 

 entered the Painomchoo valley. It is a remarkable and significant fact that 

 Turner never appears to have seen Chumulari after having passed it, nor 

 Donkia. Kinchinjhow, or Kinchinjunga at any time. 



