854 
THE TABLE LAND OF THIBET. 
of Yak dung dried, and blew it up with bellows of goat 
skin, armed with a snout of Yak's horn. My poor Lep- 
chas were benumed with cold. I stayed an hour and a half 
on the Thibetan side of the frontier, and obtained good 
barometrical observations, and others with boiling water, — 
but the latterprocess is infinitely the most troublesome. On 
our return the weather cleared magnificently, and the views 
of the great mountains already named, rising perpendic- 
ularly, exceeded anything I ever beheld. For 6,000 feet 
they rise sheer up and loom through the mist overhead ; 
their black wall-like faces patched with ice, and their tabu- 
lar tops capped with a bed of green snow, probably from 
200 to 300 feet thick. Southerly down the glen the moun- 
tain sunk to low hills, to rise again in the parallel of the 
great chain, twenty miles south, to perpetual snow, in rug- 
ged peaks. We stopped again at Peppin's tent for refresh- 
ment, and I again took horse. My stubborn, intractable, 
unshod Tartar pony never missed a foot. Sharp rocks, deep 
stony torrents, slippery paths, or pitch darkness, were all 
the same to him. These ponies are sorry looking beasts ; 
but the Soubah, who weighs sixteen stone, rode his down 
the whole thirty miles of rocks, stones, streams and moun- 
tains ; and except to stop to shake themselves like a dog, 
with a violence xhat nearly unhorsed me neither his steed 
nor mine exhibited any symptoms of fatigue. Fever rages 
below from Chootamto Darjeeling. My people behave ad- 
mirably, and I never hear a complaint; but 1 find it very 
nard to see a poor fellow corns in, his load left behind, stag- 
gering with fever, which he has caught by sleeping in the 
valleys, eyes sunk, temples throbbing, pulse at 120, and ut- 
terly disabled from calling up the merry smile with which 
the kind creatures always greet me. We have little rain, 
but much mist ; and I find great difficulty in keeping my 
plants in order. Do not be alarmed for me about fever, for 
I shall not descend below 6,000 feet. I have not been be- 
low 10,000 feet for the last two months. 1 lead a hard but 
