Nov. 1848. WALLANCHOON VILLAGE. 211 



The village is very large, and occupies a flat on the east 

 bank of the river, covered with huge boulders : the ascent to 

 it is extremely steep, probably over an ancient moraine, 

 though I did not recognise it as such at the time. Cresting 

 this, the valley at once opens, and I was almost startled 

 with the sudden change from a gloomy gorge to a broad 

 flat and a populous village of large and good painted 

 wooden houses, ornamented with hundreds of long poles 

 and vertical flags, looking like the fleet of some foreign 

 port ; while a swarm of good-natured, intolerably dirty 

 Tibetans, were kotowing to me as I advanced. 



The houses crept up the base of the mountain, on the 

 flank of which was a very large, long convent ; two-storied, 

 and painted scarlet, with a low black roof, and backed 

 by a grove of dark junipers ; while the hill-sides around 

 were thickly studded with bushes of deep green rhododen- 

 dron, scarlet berberry, and withered yellow rose. The 

 village contained about one hundred houses, irregularly 

 crowded together, from twenty to forty feet high, and 

 forty to eighty feet long ; each accommodating several 

 families. All were built of upright strong pine-planks, 

 the interstices of which were filled with yak-dung ; and they 

 sometimes rest on a low foundation wall : the door was 

 generally at the gable end ; it opened with a latch and string, 

 and turned on a wooden pivot ; the only window was a slit 

 closed by a shutter ; and the roofs were very low-pitched, 

 covered with shingles kept down by stones. The paths were 

 narrow and filthy ; and the only public buildings besides the 

 convents were Manis and Mendongs ; of these the former are 

 square-roofed temples, containing rows of praying-cylinders 

 placed close together, from four to six feet high, and gaudily 

 painted ; some are turned by hand, and others by water ■ the 



latter are walls ornamented with slabs of clay and mica slate, 



p 2 



