Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/47

 with a pretty coin to hang about the neck of her child, Phurchung, then a baby in the arms.

At about 2 p.m. we reached the Yamata ri, formed by the streams which issue from Kanchanjinga. The gorge in which this river flows is singularly beautiful. Above the steep crags on either side were blue glaciers, and at their feet forests of native firs and larches, covered with pendant mosses waving like feathers in the breeze. Just before reaching Kangpa-chan (Gyunsar) village, the Yamata ri river is crossed by a little bridge, and then the village with its wooden huts comes in view. Some of the houses were empty; a few old hags with goitre sat on their thresholds basking in the sun and spinning.

Phurchung had reached this, his native village, ahead of us, and he now came, much the worse for drink, to greet us, and led us into his mother's house, where a fire of rhododendron boughs and aromatic firs blazed in the middle of the room. Chang was ready in wooden bottles, and his mother poured some boiling water into them as soon as we were seated on the cushions placed for us. Some dry junipers and pines were burnt as incense, and two joss-sticks smoked before us. Then two brass plates full of boiled, red-skinned potatoes were offered us, followed by rice and boiled mutton, the rice being served wrapped up in the broad leaves of some kind of hill plant. When night came on we sat around the fire, each with a bottle of murwa before him; but drowsiness soon overtook me, and I fell asleep.

November 24.—The village of Kangpa-chan is built on several terraces facing the south-west, the houses enclosed in low stone walls. Several small streams empty into the Kangchan below the village, and mountains covered with snow and ice rise precipitously on either side of it, their lower slopes clad with thick forest growth of moss-covered silver firs, deodars, and larches. Juniper and