the hot weather and the monsoon, shrouded always in mist, drenched with continual rain, living on their flocks and on what the ridges can furnish, and, save for a rare visit to a distant bazar to replenish their stock of grain, content with the companionship of their sheep. In September, when the water-courses dry up and the weather grows cool, they return to their valleys. Everywhere, up to the very shoulders of Kangohenjunga, wherever there was a patch of pasture and a little water, we found the remains of their rude shelters and traces of recent habitation. This particular shepherd was the last of the descending rearguard. He took our arrival as a matter of course, politely gave us entrance, and went about his immediate business of making fire with flint and steel with an air of complete detachment. His flock of 200 sheep browsed on the hillside, unwatched apparently, but but never wandering afield, and an occasional strange sound from the shepherd conveyed instant meaning to an errant sheep. Conversation was limited, and when we departed he accepted in silence a small gift of matches and cigarettes.

we

The weather broke as we left. The mist came down and olung depressingly throughout an uninteresting and tiring march. It took just three times as long as the coolies predicted to reach our first camp beyond Niatang. The hillman is an incurable optimist in his estimate of distances. Whether it is a sense of distance or a

sense of truth that is wanting, or whether it is merely a desire to speak comforting things, I have never discovered. We crawled wearily into camp, with a thirst that the world rarely gives, and found that the only water available was a filthy little tarn that in happier circumstances one would have hesitated to wash in. We drank it, faintly disguised in the form of tea, and bitterly repented the thoughtlessness that omitted a that omitted a case of beer from the store list. Then the problem of fitting three men of normal size and their personal belongings into a tiny green tent 6 feet by 5 had to be faced. It was imperfectly solved at the cost of frequent seizures of oramp. Then the rain came on. And, lastly, we awoke with a shock to the fact that our tent and bedding were crawling with leeches, great, cold, well-nourished fellows. With heads and necks wrapped in scarves we went fearfully to sleep. But either the leeches had dined or they were not true children of the horse-leech, for we awoke unscathed.

The uneasy night ended at last, and we were out before sunrise. Night was still in the black and formless valleys, and dawn "walked tiptoe on the mountain-tops." Our reward was a unique view of Everest, humped between a broad-backed snow mass and a range of white, serrated peaks. In In a glorious morning we breakfasted on a provision-box and watched the snows turn from cold gray to pink, and

glare of full day. Then with incredible swiftness down came the mist. All day we tramped through billows of it driven before a snell north wind. The ridge is like a gigantic, irregular saw, and the road is one long switchback, rising and plunging steeply between 12,000 to 13,000 feet. Occasionally it dips into Nepal. At the anxious request of our sirdar, prompted apparently by some vivid past experience, we had procured an imposing pass from the Durbar. But one might as soon expect to meet an Abor in Piccadilly as a Nepalese official on that hungry and desolate frontier. The circle of vision was narrow, but always beautiful-thick woods of rhododendron and juniper and mountain-ash, green hollows of pasture, corries overgrown with bushes of what must be first cousin to heather, purple aconite in profusion, and quantities of more innocent yellow and red flowers for which our meagre botanical vocabulary held no names. At noon it began to rain, and poured steadily and increasingly. The camp at Mingutang was a drenched and sorry sight. After dark the floods descended and the wind blew and beat upon the tent till it leaked mournfully; and the three cramped and shivering inmates crept into sleepingbags and slept soundly.

At Mingutang the ridge widens. One leaves the steep V-shaped gorges of the lower hills and enters a generous, open, upland country. Across

On

up a noble Highland glen. the west precipitous green hills cleft into corries and seamed with waterfalls, on the east long easy slopes of pasture and trees, where the burns have leave to wind and trickle over pebbles. It was a soft, gray, West-Highland morning when we sauntered sentimentally up the glen, where every corner was reminiscent of homely places. Among the rhododendrons and rowans we shot a brace of blood - pheasants, a demurely coloured hen and a handsome cock with gaudy plumage of red and green and yellow. The woods give place to a russet moor which ends in a steep scree-slope. The glen leads to a high plateau, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet, where several great ridges are knit together, forming a fourfold watershed. A string of lochans feeds the streams, -gray sheets of water with granite shores encircled by green hills. We lunched coldly on a wet rock by the side of one: the rain plashed drearily on the wan water, and the mist crept along the hillside, and one could have sworn that both the loch and the weather were of Galloway. It is undulating country, long slopes of grass and rocks and scree. Our constant companion the mist was with us again, but one was dimly conscious of a succession of wide green hollows streaming with water, and narrowing to ledges over which the water poured into rooky gorges. From the edge

of the plateau there is a breathless descent of 2000 feet to Gamathang in the valley of the little Rathong. Once a considerable yak-station, Gamathang has now only a ruined hut to tell the tale. It is an exquisite spot, a patch of green at the meeting - place of five glens, with towering pine-clad hills literally overhanging it on every side. Our camp there lingers pleasantly in the minddry sand for the tent floor, the luxury of a bath in an ice-cold stream, a fine evening, and roast pheasant for dinner.

The traveller in the Himalayas, to whom time is an object, should be careful to have either clear weather or some one in his retinue who knows the road. From Gamathang to Jongri we had neither. The survey map is a broken reed, as it shows only the main ridges, and to take the wrong valley may mean days of unnecessary labour. It is equally useless to work by direction when the snows and all landmarks are hidden in mist. We We made our first mistake at at Bhoktu, the summit of the ridge above Gamathang. Instead of keeping along the Kangla road and making a detour which the map, correct in this instance, marked, we turned to the right, which reason indicated was the direction of Jongri. The light of reason and a clear path, which unfortunately led to the right, were our undoing. In a few miles the track faded into nothingness, and we were stranded in a forest of thick rhododendron. To retrace our VOL. CXCI.-NO. MCLVIII.

steps was the proper course, but again guided by a mistaken sense of direction we decided to force a way down the valley to where it joins the Rathong, which flows beneath the Jongri ridge. In open country this might have been a sound plan, but not in forest. Lightheartedly we commenced to carve out a path with kukris, hoping for open ground ahead, which never came. Underfoot the going was a detestable mixture of mould and mud and soaking decay. It rained incessantly. Drenched to the skin we struggled on for five hours, hacking at trees, dodging branches, plunging through torrents, confident that each shoulder would disclose the Rathong, and always disappointed. Towards evening we abandoned the unequal contest and started up hill in hope of finding a dry place to camp. The forest grew thicker and the mist denser and the ridges more confusing. It became unpleasantly clear that we had lost ourselves, and we had just accepted the certainty of a night of extreme discomfort when suddenly through the mist and trees we caught sight of a thin trail of smoke. record piece of jungle-cutting brought us to the source of it.

A

It was a rough log-cabin. The little clearing in front was piled a foot deep with birds' feathers. The owner was a wild creature of the woods, a Limbu from Nepal, who lived by trapping musk-deer and selling the musk. Whether there are more of his astonish2 K

not. We were too weary and the day was too far spent for inquiries into his strange and solitary existence. Negotiations were difficult at first. He sat crouched over his smoking fire whittling a stake for one of his traps and stoutly refused to move. Finally, by a promise of bakshish and other arguments which we could not follow, the sirdar persuaded him to show us the path to Jongri. Having got him started, the difficulty was to keep him in sight, for the man was a marvel of muscle and sinew, and he took these punishing slopes like an antelope. The road led up the side of a long fence of brushwood, with every few yards a gap set with a cunning and most effective trap. The ascent was probably not much over 1500 feet, but it seemed endless and the pace was killing. At last he put us on a narrow track, and just at nightfall we reached some water and fuel and a possible camping-ground. No European, so far as I know, has crossed the hills from Gamathang to Jongri. In any case our route was a new one; but it is not recommended to future travellers.

Here a word must be said in praise of the coolies. They were splendid fellows, and throughout the trek never gave a moment's trouble, Their cheerfulness was amazing. Each carried a load of sixty pounds. They swung downhill singing and whistling, uphill they groaned Ram Ram in mock distress. The camp arrangements were never delayed

It

The perpetual mist and rain never damped their spirits. Nights spent in wet cloths under flimsy leaking shelters they took as a matter of course; in the morning they rolled out smiling and cheerful as ever to take up their packs made heavier by the rain. Throughout the episode of the jungle-cutting they never grumbled, and I can imagine no greater trial of temper than to carry a load through thick undergrowth. They were walking steadily for ten hours up and down many thousand feet of very trying country. was an inspiration from heaven that made them play at being a flock of sheep. The head coolie played the shepherd, uttering weird seductive calls, and the rest baa-ed in chorus. Mercifully the childish jest never grew stale. The steeper the ground the louder and more pathetic rose the bleating. At the end of the day, when the shepherd limped into camp ahead of his flock, halfdead with exhaustion, he informed us gravely that the bheri-walla was very tired, and he had lost all his sheep. Our troubles seemed now to be at an end. Another day of mist and rain did not disturb us. We even debated whether we need carry tiffin, so certain were we of reaching Jongri by midday. But it had been ordained that we should explore yet another nameless glen. When we arrived at what we rightly thought was the valley

of the Churung Chu we hesitated fatally. The sirdar, who had once come this way from the Kangla, thought that the path to Jongri led down the valley. But a broader and clearer track led up the hillside in the same direction. If we were inclined to take the low road, the coolies, acutely mindful of yesterday, were more than determined to take the high road, and while we debated they took a firm line and disappeared in the mist. We followed meekly. The path crossed the ridge and descended to the next valley, for two hours it gave the impression of having a definite object, and then it vanished abruptly into thin air. The one thing clear in our perplexed minds was a determination that there should be no more jungle-cutting. But the sirdar was confident that we had but to climb the ridge on our left to strike Jongri. We did so wearily, only to hear the roar of another torrent in a farther valley. We seemed to be wandering in a nightmare of parallel glens. Had we pushed on we would have found the Rathong, and might have struck the sheep-path from Kabru to Jongri. But it was late, and we had learnt caution, so we retraced our steps and camped coldly in the valley, very peevish at the thought of a precious day wasted.

But all regret vanished when we awoke next morning to find a cloudless sky and a world white with hoar-frost. We even ceased to resent the mist which had veiled our eyes till we

reached the very base of the snows.

Above the camp a stream issued from 8 pure white glacier, flowed sedately through a broad green fold in the hills and poured over a high waterfall into our nameless valley. At sunrise we climbed the ridge to the south and for an hour forgot a ravenous appetite. On the west were the precipices and powdered snow of the Kangla and an unknown peak above our valley, then little Kabru and, fronting us, the splendid mass of Kabru itself, running out to the Dome and the Forked peak; then the gap where lay the Guichala ; then Pandim and the peaks to the east, a noble line of dazzling sunlit snows sparkling in the frosty morning air. So near were we that Kabru completely hid the peaks of Kangchenjunga. Only those who for days have had their horizon bounded by a narrow circle of gray mist can appreciate the full glory of that vision. We walked on closecropped turf studded with blue gentians. A herd of startled mountain - sheep surveyed the intruders on their feedinggrounds for a moment, and in another second were far away on a snow - slope. The camp below smoked cheerfully, and a field of wet clothes lay drying in the sun. It was a heartening morning after five days of rain. There was no mistaking the line of country now, and the mist that was already rising held no terrors for us. We crossed into the valley of the Churung Chu and descended steeply through thick rhododendrons by the side of its