Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/56

 cultivate it, and handing him a scarf (khatag), I expressed the hope that we might meet the next year (sangpoi ja chog). Many of the bystanders made wishes for our welfare, but some one in the crowd said that I was certainly not a Tibetan. Then another swore I was an Indian; and a third said that they would soon have news of me: "That Hindu will surely die in the snows, and his servants will soon return here with the news of his death."

It was past noon when the coolies picked up their loads, and I set out in excellent spirits, having now escaped the much-feared obstruction from the Yangma people, on whose mercy and good-will our success entirely depended.

We passed by some memdong and chorten at the entrance to the convent, and then followed up the course of the Yangma, passing by a pretty lakelet, the Miza, or "man eating," now filled with ice, and seeing on the way some very high chorten, known as thongwa kundol, "bringing deliverance when seen," which had a few years previously been repaired by the head lama of Wallung. Near these we saw a half-dozen wild sheep (nao), but we gave up all idea of shooting them when told that the Yangma people think the gods of the land and mountains (Ski-bdag, rl-lha) would be deeply offended if any one molested them.

By 3 p.m. we got sight of the village of Yangma, whose houses could only be distinguished from the boulders everywhere strewing the ground by the smoke issuing from the roofs. There were not more than a hundred houses in the village, and the fields round about were enclosed within low stone walls. Buckwheat, barley, turnips, radishes, and potatoes are grown here, and rice brought from Yang-ku tang and other villages in the warmer valleys is procurable. The village was founded by Tibetans from Tashi-rabka, one of them having discovered the valley and its comparative fertility while hunting for a lost yak calf. The name Yangma was given it on account of the breadth of the valley.

The male part of the population is idle in the extreme, but the