GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEYS AND EXPLORATIONS. 155 



Jesuit "Fathers who lived outside the city, and by one of them he 

 ■was presented with an introductory letter to his clerical brethren at 

 Bathang and Darjeeling. and with a small gift of money. The same 



priest also apprised the Surveyor- General by letter of A k's 



safety, which was a great relief to General Walker, as some alarming 

 rumours had reached India in the meantime, owing to the absence of 

 any precise intelligence. 



A k then set out on his return journey to India, proceeding 



due east by the regular official road through Lithang to Bathang. 

 At the latter place the party diverged in a SW. direction, and the 

 Di Chu (Yang-tse-kiang), Chiamdo Chu (Mekong), and the Giama 

 JSTu Chu (Salwen)* were traversed in succession. The first of these 

 rivers was crossed by a ferry, the second by a slanting leather rope 

 to which men and even animals are attached in a sort of sliding 

 cradle of rope. The Nu Chu, which is deep and rapid and 200 paces 

 wide, was crossed by rafts propelled by oars, and prevented from 

 going down the stream by some of the boatmen holding on to a 

 rope stretched across the river. The Tila La pass westward 

 (16,100 feet) gave the travellers their first access into the basin of 

 the great rivers of Bengal, the river Zayul Chu which drains the 

 valley being the same as Wilcox's Brahmakund and T. T. Cooper's 

 Brahmaputra. The latter traveller succeeded in ascending the 



stream as far as the village of Prun.f A k descended it as far 



as Sama, which is about 20 miles from the Assam boundary, and 

 which is the place where Krik and Boury, the two French missionaries, 

 were murdered in 1854.J The Zayul district belongs to a distinct 

 hydrographical basin, and is warmer than any other part of Tibet. 

 Criminals sentenced to transportation for life are sent thither. The 

 inhabitants speak a very different language from that of the Tibetans, 

 which, however, they understand. Many of their customs are more 

 akin to those of the Hindus, and they raise two crops, harvested in 

 the autumn and spring respectively. 



* This river has been generally hitherto assumed to be the upper course of the 

 Salwen river, and this is the view I endeavoured to establish in my letter to the Royal 

 Geographical Society {see Proceedings for 1883, p. 664). General Walker, however, 

 thinks that it is more probably the source of the Irawadi ; see Proceedings of the 

 E.G.8. for June 1887. 



| See The Mishmee Hills (London : H. S. King & Co.), p. 228. 



| See Memorandum by Monseigneur de Mazure in Journal of the Asiatic Society, 

 Vol. XXX. 



