ABORS AND GALONGS. 99 



above the village is diverted to turn a prayer-barrel and then, raised to the power 

 of holy water, becames the village supply. The people of course both here and at 

 Kopu look quite different to the Abors, with their prayer- wheels and rosaries, chogas 

 and putties; and the interior of their houses, smooth, thick, blackened, plank 

 walls, floors and ceilings together with their tables and neatly disposed belongings are 

 in striking contrast to the squalor universal in the Abor country. 



The Sibi waterfall on the left bank of the Tsanpo looked magnificent: where 

 the stream poured over the brow of the cliff it seemed a good volume of water, but 

 before it fell into the cup of light-green vegetation that lay on its way down 

 to the great river below it had been dissipated into drifting clouds of spray. The 

 Tsanpo here, narrowing at intervals through canons, is broken by a series of tre- 

 mendous rapids, the most considerable we have yet seen. 



The march opened with a climb of one thousand feet and a stiff descent of three. June 24th. 

 On the crest of the ridge we found a fine old chhorten about 10 feet high all stuck 

 with rice-paper "tracts." It seems to be the correct thing to keep to the left when 

 passing these altars (they form an "island " in the middle of the path) and the men 

 of the Lakhimpur Military Police with the party pick leaves, or branches, and 

 throw them on to the plinth, an offering to the patron saint of hill travellers. At 

 the bottom of the descent the Nugong river rushed foaming under a cantilever 

 suspension bridge, the first we have seen, with a span of 100 feet and about a 35-foot 

 drop to the water below. The bridge was " insured" by the provision of miniature 

 forests of long poles flying inscribed banners at the entrances and by quantities of 

 rice-paper tracts on the bridge itself. On some of these were boldly drawn pictures 

 of a horse. L 



The path then followed the rocky shore of the Tsanpo keeping very little above 

 high flood level. In most places logs and chunks of wood had been laid to fill up the 

 more formidable interstices. Passing a rest house, solidly built (a Memba character- 

 istic) with open sides we came to a wide-sweeping bay choked with magnificent pine 

 lumber. The doctor, coming on behind, appropriately discovered a rather disagree- 

 able corpse that had been thrown up by the Tsanpo, that breaks along the shore 

 line of its upper bays in brisk little waves. We are camped for the night about 

 two miles below Shirang. 



A cloudy day and excellent going over an easy road. We have at last got out June 25th. 

 of the zone of Abor influences observed in the Memba villages of Kopu and Geling and 

 now chhortens and prayer-barrel houses are common objects on the road. We had a 

 stifhsh climb at the outset, and it was an hour and a half after starting before we 

 were abreast of the Shirang Tsogan 2 which occupies a superb site above a gorge of 

 the river, here running in a narrow cutting at least 1000 feet deep, the cliffs being 

 absolutely precipitous. On the left bank, opposite, on a grassy plateau with a sheer 



1 I have some of these in my possession printed in strips on tough country paper. Waddell (" Buddhism," p. 411 

 et seq.) calls it the Tibetan Lung horse. 



9 Tsogans would seem to be chapels with one lama as caretaker and generally a few servants in the buildings 

 clusteied round it. 



