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



and I, following two of the Bhotias who were equally ignorant of the 

 place, went a good way westward towards Changchung and were floun- 

 dering about the swampy ground for a long while seeking in vain for 

 the channel that did not exist, till at last we perceived that the rest of 

 our party, with the baggage, &c. had already turned the northern ex- 

 tremity of the lake far behind us, and were now proceeding eastward 

 along the northern shore : we followed, and joined them by dark. The 

 Bhotias affirmed that Barka Tarjum was too close to the bank of the 

 lake to be passed by daylight without risk of detection, particularly if 

 the Garpun should be encamped there with a concourse of people, as 

 we had been informed by the shepherds of Chujia Tol on the 2nd 

 instant. It was resolved therefore to pass Barka by night; and in 

 order to make it later and safer, we halted for an hour, a mile or so east 

 from the northern point of the lake. We were then so far north of the 

 shore that water was not accessible ; fuel also was very scarce ; so in- 

 stead of dinner or tea, I had to content myself with biscuits, port-wine 

 (both very bad), and a cheroot. My port-wine in the wooden decanters 

 had got sour enough by this time, and nastier than ever. 



At 8 J p. m. we resumed our journey, course somewhere about south- 

 eastward, as well as I could judge from the moon, and the great land 

 marks Kailas and Gurla. The ground became very sandy, and undu- 

 lated into ridges and hollows which reminded me of the bank of the 

 Ganges. Three or four miles of this brought us to the La-Chu, which 

 we found a very large stream, in the aggregate I suppose 150 feet wide 

 and at deepest 3 feet, running through a sandy bed here a furlong broad, 

 but expanding with much subdivision of the stream towards the lake. 

 The passage proved extremely troublesome and occupied us near half an 

 hour : the sandy bottom was soft under the main streams of running 

 water, and frozen in the shallows, so as to afford footing for an instant, 

 then breaking suddenly under the feet of the cattle and plunging them 

 knee-deep at each step ; it was without exception the worst ford I ever 

 crossed. Two miles further on, in the same direction and over the 

 same sort of ground, we reached the Barka river, which was like the 

 other, but a third smaller in width and depth. The ford was not 

 quite so troublesome as the La-Chu but the cattle showed the greatest 

 reluctance to attempt it. We could neither see nor hear any thing at 

 all of the Tarjum, being in all probability a mile or two below it, and 



