302 Messrs A. and P. Gerard’s Jccomit of a Joirnwy 
began to snow, and the thermometer was below the freezing 
point, so that we were glad to make the best of our way down. 
The footpath was good, but a steep descent, through juniper and 
thyme of many kinds, to Nisung, a small Lama village, situated 
near the Taglakhar, a large stream, which rises in Chinese Tar- 
tary, three or four marches to the eastward. The extreme 
height of this village, by corresponding barometrical observa- 
tions, is 10,165 feet, and grapes do not ripen here. We saw 
several gardens of fine large turnips, fenced round with hedges 
of gooseberries ; the latter are of the red sort, small, and ex- 
tremely acid, but make a capital tart. 
3t}i October . — We were delayed till 2 p. m., in order to get 
grain ground for the consumption of our people, there being no 
village at the next stage. We only marched 1| miles, and the 
road at first was a descent to the Taglakhar, and then a steep 
ascent of 2000 feet, most part of the way up a slope of 40°, and 
over rugged rocks. W e were obliged to halt here, there being 
no water for many miles a-head. 
0th October . — Marched 10 miles to the bed of a mountain- 
torrent, and did not arrive till an hour after dark. This day’s 
journey was one of the most tiresome we had experienced, cross- 
ing two mountains of 12,000 and ltl,000 feet. The ascents and 
descents, one of which was full 4000 feet in perpendicular height, 
were steeper for a longer continuance than any we had yet seen, 
and the path was strewed with broken slate, which gave way 
under the feet. Neither tent nor eatables arrived, and we had 
nothing but cakes of very coarse meal, which, however, hunger 
made palatable. Upon this kind of food, together with a few 
partridges, wdiich our sepoys occasionally shot, and without 
either plates, knives, or forks, we lived for five days. It would 
have been amusing to see us sitting upon blankets, near a 
fire, in the open air, surrounded by our servants, dissecting 
the partridges with the kookree, or short sword, worn by the 
Goorkhalees, and smoking plain tobacco out of a pipe little bet- 
ter than what is used by the lowest classes. Novelty, however, 
has its charms ; and our being in a country untrodden by a 
European, gave us a delight amidst our most toilsome marches 
scarcely to be experienced, much less imagined, by a person 
who has never been in the same situation. 
