156 Narrative of a Journey to Cho Lagan, fyc. [Aug. 



the banks of Rakas Tal" "in vast numbers ;" they had all migrated to 

 India I suppose. Nor could I see any thing of the fish, though I do 

 not doubt the assertions of the Bhotias that there are plenty of them. In 

 the winter when the lakes are frozen over, numbers of the fish, they 

 say, are cast up dead along the banks where the ice is broken, and in 

 this state the Hunias present them to their Gods as prasad, but they 

 have not the sense to take the fish alive for their own eating. 



The northern horn of the lake was now rapidly narrowing and we 

 continued skirting its western edge till sunset, when we reached the 

 extreme north-western point, where the lake ended in swampy ground 

 interspersed with puddles of water. This is, or ought to be, the Nikds. 

 The ground evidently slopes down to Changchung, a verdant hollow 

 with pasturage, Dung, &c, a mile or two to the north-westward, but 

 there is no visible channel from the lake, and the only effluence is by 

 filtration through the porous soil of the intermediate ground, unless it 

 be at times of extreme flood, when the level of the lake may possibly 

 rise high enough to overflow the margin at this corner. The stream 

 so formed flows westward, through an open valley ; below Changchung 

 it receives the Sar-chu (gold river), a rivulet from the deep ravine 

 immediately west of Kailas ; the united stream then takes the name of 

 Lajandak, which is also an encamping ground on its banks about a day's 

 journey from Gangri : below this the river receives three other feeders 

 from the Gangri mountains, viz. the Kyuktwa ; the Dokpa-chu, (i. e. 

 the river of the Dokpa), by the ravine of which a road crosses into 

 Bongbwa-Tol, a valley on the north side of the Gangri hills, inhabited 

 by a tribe of people called Dokpa, who are the chief carriers of the salt 

 from the north country ; and the Yarmigu ; the united river then flows 

 under Tirthapuri. Dulju is a Gumba on the left bank, half a day 

 west of Lajandak, as far south-east of Tirthapuri, and a day and 

 a half east of Kyunglung ; the most direct road from the last named 

 place to Gangri running through the valley by Dulju and Lajandak. 

 Moorcroft's statement regarding the Tirthapuri river, (12th August,) 

 agrees with this account of mine, though not with his own of the 15th, 

 when he made the Chugarh come from Rakas Tal. Hearsay's map 

 makes the same mistake, and on the 13th idem, he describes two of 

 the four tributary streams from the Gangri mountains large enough to 

 be bridged with Sangas, though he did not notice them on his way 



