218 EAST NEPAL. Chap. IX. 



found all but impossible, owing to there being no bazaar. 

 My provisions were running short, and for the same reason 

 I had no present hope of replenishing them. All my party 

 had, I found, reckoned with certainty that I should have 

 had enough of this elevation and weather by the time I 

 reached Walloong. Some of them fell sick; the Guobah 

 swore that the passes were full of snow, and had been 

 impracticable since October ; and the Ghorka Havildar 

 respectfully deposed that he had no orders relative to the 

 pass. Prompt measures were requisite, so I told all my 

 people that I should stop the next day at Walloong, and 

 proceed on the following on a three days' journey to the 

 pass, with or without the Guobah's permission. To the 

 Ghorka soldiers I said that the present they would 

 receive, and the character they would take to their com- 

 mandant, depended on their carrying out this point, which 

 had been fully explained before starting. My servants I told 

 that their pay and reward also depended on their implicit 

 obedience. I took the Guobah aside and showed him troops 

 of yaks (tethered by halters and toggles to a long rope 

 stretched between two rocks), which had that morning 

 arrived laden with salt from the north ; I told him it was 

 vain to try and deceive me ; that my passport was ample, 

 and that I should expect a guide, provisions, and snow- 

 boots the next day ; and that every impediment and every 

 facility should be reported to the rajah. 



During my two days' stay at Walloong, the weather was 

 bitterly cold: as heretofore, the nights and mornings were 

 cloudless, but by noon the whole sky became murky, the 

 highest temperature (50°) occurring at 10 a.m. At this 

 season the prospect from this elevation (10,385 feet), was 

 dreary in the extreme ; and the quantity of snow on the 

 mountains, which was continually increasing, held out a 



