Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/78

48 off him at once and climbed upon the bank behind me. I then set about throwing into the river, near where the horse was, stones, rocks, and broken branches of trees that I found lying about, in order to improvise there a passable footway for myself as well as for the Mongolian scholar and his animal. Stones flying and muddy water splashing around him scared my horse, and, with a wild effort, he struggled out and landed himself on the opposite bank; but my friend's pony remained immovable till we had managed to build a way across for ourselves and pulled him after us. That day we stopped in a village called Samar (red clay). On the next we again climbed half-way up a mountain, and proceeded due north along a path that lay midway between the top and bottom of its slope, that is to say, toward the north of Dhavalagiri.

In the mountains below Tukje I found common pines and cedars growing in fair abundance, but now these became very rare, the obtusa species of pine taking their place, and even these attaining a height of not more than twenty feet at the most, the ground being otherwise covered with shrubby growths. Riding on the snow, which was still on the mountain, we had made a distance of about fifteen miles before we reached a hamlet named Kirung, where I found willow trees growing luxuriantly. The inhabitants hereabout were all Tibetans, and I saw fluttering on every house-top a white flag with certain religious texts printed on it. These flags are to be seen everywhere in the interior of Tibet, as I afterwards found, and that even where the people are living in tents. Leaving the village, we rode on northwards, over snow, through an obtusa-pine forest, till the night fell and the moon rose, when I again heard a cuckoo. Then I had an uta: