Dec. 184a TIBETAN CAMP. 203 



Ascending, we reached an open grassy valley, and over- 

 took the Tibetans who had preceded ns, and who had halted 

 here to feed their sheep. A good-looking girl of the party 

 came to ask me for medicine for her husband's eyes, 

 which had suffered from snow-blindness : she brought me 

 a present of snuff, and carried a little child, stark naked, yet 

 warm from the powerful rays of the sun, at nearly 14,000 

 feet elevation, in December ! I prescribed for the man, 

 and gave the mother a bright farthing to hang round the 

 child's neck, which delighted the party. My watch was 

 only wondered at ; but a little spring measuring-tape 

 that rolled itself up, struck them dumb, and when I 

 threw it on the ground with the tape out, the mother 

 shrieked and ran away, while the little savage howled 

 after her. 



Above, the path up the ascent was blocked with siioav- 

 beds, and for several miles we alternately scrambled 

 among rocks and over slippery slopes, to the top of the 

 first ridge, there being two to cross. The first consisted of 

 a ridge of rocks running east and west from a superb 

 sweep of snowy mountains to the north-west, which pre- 

 sented a chaotic scene of blue glacial ice and white snow, 

 through which splintered rocks and beetling crags thrust 

 their black heads. The view into the Kambachen gorge 

 was magnificeut, though it did not reveal the very bottom 

 of the valley and its moraines : the black precipices of its 

 opposite flank seemed to rise to the glaciers of Nango, 

 fore-shortened into snow-capped precipices 5000 feet high, 

 amongst which lay the Kambachen pass, bearing north-west 

 by north. Lower down the valley, appeared a broad flat, 

 called Jubla, a halting-place one stage below the village of 

 Kambachen, on the road to Lelyp on the Tambur : it must 

 be a remarkable ojeolo^ical as well as natural feature, for it 



