102 GEORGE D-S-DUNBAR ON 



fields, with its orderly row of black wooden roofs nestling against the rounded hill on 

 which the white walls of the squat solid Dzong showed through the trees. The top 

 of the rise brought us within sight of Janyur and abreast of the field of grass, iris 

 brachen and bramble where we are spending the night. Height of camp 5200 feet. 

 Above us is the other half of Janyur village. 



The hamlets that are here dotted thickly about the country are most of them 

 small — a dozen houses or so. Our doctor Captain J. B. C. Macdonald, I.M.S., who 

 knows Tibet, says that the Membas are very like the Tibetans : and they occasionally 

 manage a rather disjointed conversation with some of our Bhotia coolies. The Abors 

 call the people of Pemakoichen Membas ; they themselves say they are Mumpas from 

 Darma in Bhotan. They talk a dialect that is neither Kamba nor Po, and the 

 Tibetan of Lhasa 'is to them unknowe.' It was stated by our Tibetan interpreter 

 that the Tibetans call them Dukpas l (savages), but this I think may be incorrect as 

 this term seems to be properly applied to the Nomads of Southern Tibet. What I 

 believe are called Yunnanese rupees and eight-anna pieces are to be found, but the 

 ordinary currency is the Tibetan tangka. 



One man of Janyur, who electrified his audience by delivering himself in 

 halting but undoubted Assamese, mentioned casually that he had been to Tezpur 

 four times and once to Gauhati in a river steamer. He knew about Calcutta, but 

 had not actually been there. He had however enlarged his experience by a ride on 

 the Tezpur light railway. It transpired that he had been down with the Bhotanese 

 officials who come yearly to Darrang to take the Posa, 2 going across the Doshung La 

 and down into Towang: he had not been further down the valley than Tuting. 

 June 27th. We came to-day by a very easy road to the Pemasiri river, up the left bank 



of which run the roads to the Doshung La. There are apparently two; one the 

 Yak track easy and circuitous, the other the ordinary travellers' path precipitous 

 and direct that saves a day. Ngasang, just beyond Janyur, looked, but for 

 the people and the general air of solidity of the houses, exactly like a village in the 

 plains. We passed below the Tsogan, and a tall solitary pine growing on the hill-side 

 lower down, and here we had a fine view of Bipung and the crest of the spur that 

 shelters Rinchenpung from the gaze of travellers from the south. Sweet-william 

 was found by one of the party in the Lama's garden up on the hill. Podung 

 and Pateng were the two other villages we skirted on to-day's march. 



The most southern point reached by Kinthup may be open to argument. He 

 may have surveyed the scene from afar, or he may have heard some saga of 

 adventure down the Abor valley, but that Kinthup came down to a point below 

 the 29th parallel is indubitable, his accuracy to this point is in striking contrast 

 to the fickleness of his memory regarding the Abor villages further south — or 



1 S C. D. (" Journey to Lhasa," p. 258) details a cure for snakebite followed by the "Glak-los (wild people) of 

 Pemakyod," but these he identifies with the Lho tawa (Tangam Abors presumably). It is possible, if Waddell is followed 

 here, that Dukpa may be Dugpa the Bhotanese sect of lamas, a name that this writer says is frequently and erroneously 

 used as a synonym for the Nyingma sect. .See ' Buddhism," and also " Among the Himalayas," p. 249. 



2 The yearly subsidy dating from the old Assamese raj made to certain of the hill tribes. 



