Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/42

 escape the snows on this side of the path, you cannot do so on the other." He trembled and looked pale and depressed. He cried, and said, "Oh, sir, we pon-yog [master and servant] will perish if we go not back to Bogto. The skies are ominous, and tell you to return towards the Bogto la." He repeated his entreaties with childish tears, but in vain. I told him and the coolies that I was determined not to retrace a single step, and that all his entreaties were to no purpose. In an hour's time we could scarcely reach Bogto, and if the snow began falling in the mean time, we could hardly escape; besides, such a course would not lessen our troubles, as we should have the risk of recrossing the distance we had now travelled over. There might be a second snowfall, when we should again have to turn back.

Ceding finally to my arguments, Phurchung pushed forward. I took the lead, and with fresh energy clambered on, till after an hour we stood on the pass. The skies had cleared up, the azure heavens again smiled on us, and the welcome reappearance of the brilliant sun dispelled all our fears. To our left was Sundub phug, to the right the towering pinnacles of Kangla jang-ma, while the rounded form of the lofty Lap-chyi in the Shar-Khambu district of Nepal rose above the haze. The valley of the Chum-bok la is called Chu lonkyok, "The Water-spoon," because it receives the waters of the surrounding mountains in a spoon-like basin.

I had hardly time to congratulate myself on having reached the summit, when our guide, now smiling, put his arms in the straps (nambo) of his load, and uttering the usual prayer (lha sol), resumed his journey. The descent was fraught with immense dangers, for it lay through trackless snows. The guide sounded the snow everywhere for a path, and not finding one, he took a circuitous direction which seemed practicable to his experienced eye.

After walking about an hour we found we had made but little progress, when we came on the tracks of a Tibetan long-tailed leopard (sah). I wondered how the animal had been able to walk along over the soft snow without ever sinking in it, but my men explained this by attributing supernatural powers to this beast, which they said was indeed the goblin of leopards. An hour's struggle in the snow exhausted my strength, and I could proceed no further. The guide opened the loads and repacked them, putting all the breakable