PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



37 



I have not been able to visit them, as the Hunias keep now a strict 

 watch on Europeans who may wish to penetrate so far* I found 

 a series of three smaller (fig. 6), but very picturesque, lakes north of 

 the Mdna Gadh, in perhaps the most inaccessible region I have yet 



Fig. 6. One of Jessie's Lakes in Tibet. 



visited. They are drained by a stream which runs into the Hop 

 Ga"dh, and they are surrounded by snow-clad heights and bleak moun- 

 tain scenery, relieved by strips, near the margin of the lakes, of flower 

 covered meadows. Nothing, perhaps, can equal the utter desolation 

 and wildness of their surroundings. Although within some thirty 

 miles of the grazing grounds of Poling and Dogwa Aur, the spot is 

 apparently never visited by any of the nomads who tend their flocks 

 of sheep on the Hundes plain. Surrounded by stupendous and snow- 

 covered heights, which, as I am assured, have become much more 

 inaccessible within the memory of man, these lakes do not seem to 

 have been visited by any of the few native travellers who use the 

 Mcina pass to reach Tsaprang on the Sutlej. I could not learn that 

 they were known by any name, and so I put them down in my diary 

 as " Jessie's lakes." 



( 37 ) 



