100 GEORGE D-S-DUNBAR ON 



granite bluff down to the Tsanpo stands Mongku. Just above the gorge a good 

 cane bridge of Abor pattern keeps communication open between Mongku and Shirang. 



The monastic buildings were enclosed within a high and solid stone wall with a 

 picturesque gate on the north side, i.e. away from the river, which is here flowing 

 almost due west. An orthodox mithan fence led one to hope vainly for yak, but 

 the cattle we did see were fine upstanding beasts, rather like Herefords in appear- 

 ance. Inside the wall were four houses. The main building was an imposing struc- 

 ture, the lower storey of solid masonry, the upper storey of wood with a delightful 

 balcony, reminding one of the houses overlooking the Jhelum at Srinagar. The build- 

 ing of next importance was the dwelling house, in appearance like a stranded house 

 boat, being built entirely of wood. An Abor-built granary and an open byre com- 

 prised the farm buildings. All round the houses grew crops, and fruit trees were 

 dotted about ; in one corner rose a smal] plantation of bamboos and in another a 

 clump of plantains. 



Passing through orange and hill lime trees, just turning from flower to fruit, we 

 reached the village, which consisted of a group of between 30 and 40 solidly built 

 houses of wood on well-made stone dykes. The carpentering and masonry work were 

 exceedingly good. All the houses except one were thatched. The domesticated 

 jungle fowl of the Abor hills has disappeared and a breed of black fowl and some- 

 thing very like a Plymouth Rock have taken its place. Some of the wall foundations 

 of the houses were enclosed to make pigsties, but from the usual wooden pigsties 

 attached to, or near, the majority of the houses it has been gathered that the Abor 

 method of sanitation obtains in the Memba country. The people here are quite 

 Tibetan in appearance. None of the women, and only a few of the men, can talk 

 Abor. Altars, banners, heaps of inscribed stones and broken bits of pottery are to be 

 found all along the road. The Membas understand wet-rice cultivation, grow flowers 

 (I saw the ubiquitous marigold in one garden) and have carefully tended ' market 

 garden ' plots in which they grow beans, cucumbers and marrows. 



After a certain amount of climbing down and up and the crossing of another 

 cantilever bridge we reached our halting place for the night on a grassy lawn 

 right down on the bank of the Tsanpo and near a clear stream with a little prayer- 

 wheel house built over it. Just beyond our camp a cane bridge spans the river, 

 the third since the Mongku gorge. This is a country of waterfalls tumbling down the 

 high rock faces hundreds and hundreds of feet. The height of the river here is 2200 

 feet above sea level. 

 June 26th. Our road lay through the small eight-house village of L,ingkong on to a wide 



plateau cut into terraces of wet-rice cultivation. The planting out is done in July 

 and August, and the fields are now being ploughed and prepared with the help of 

 cattle. From Iyingkong onwards the valley widens, more particularly on the right 

 bank. The mountains are above us, towering 12,000 feet and more, folds at the 

 skirts of the dominating Namshia Barwa (25,741 ft.) that was known to the Abor Field 

 Force as Pemakoi Peak. Between the jungle-clad steep slopes of the high spurs and 

 the grey foaming river, now 2000 feet below the road, rolls out a stretch of wide 



