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having finally to drag the tents close up to the snow, where the cold as soon as the sun went down was extreme. All night long it froze hard, and the thermometer was still some degrees below freezing-point inside my tent while I was having breakfast the next morning, and when we started we made the pace a pretty warm one to set the circulation going. A long hard day added nothing to the bag, though I saw a fair amount of game, and had a shot or two at various ranges; but the day following I bagged a couple of antelope, one in rather a curious manner. I had been wriggling along over very bare ground when one of the three antelope I was stalking became alarmed and bolted, immediately of course followed by the other two. I took a hurried shot at the best of the three, missing him, and as he galloped away, missed him again with the second rifle. Putting up the 300-yards sight I tried once more, and had the satisfaction of seeing him fall; but the curious part of it was that Pommer swore that the bullet struck the ground, ricochetted, and then went into the beast, who was about 400 yards off. Whether this was a fact or not I am unable to say; though Pommer was quite positive he saw the dust fly up between us and the animal almost at the moment that he fell. It was while skinning this beast that I caught sight of another herd not very far off, and got a nice head of 23 inches from it after a successful stalk.

Antelope seemed to be very plentiful, and no doubt the farther east one penetrated the more one would see; but being satisfied with what I had got, I sent one of the men who was with me back to bring camp on, and marched on south for a few miles, halting for the night on the almost dried-up bed of a stream known as the Mippal Loomba. Next day I followed

the course of the river, which flowed between great mountains of shale and stone in a south-westerly direction, and camped at the foot of a nullah coming down from the north. The morning of the 27th I spent searching the nullah for game; but seeing nothing worth a shot, continued south-west, reaching a patch of tamarisk-bush, where I camped for the night. A little farther on I saw some nyán, but failed to get near them, and on the 29th did a long march up hill all day, camping for the night at a spot some way up the Kieu La, on the frontier. The cold during the night was terrible, and in spite of sleeping-bag and blankets I was perpetually waked up by cold pure and simple. Snow fell during the night, but in the early hours of the morning it cleared up and settled down to freeze. I had unfortunately forgotten to put out the thermometer, so am unable to say exactly how much frost there was; but that the temperature fell pretty low was proved by the water in the basin in my tent being frozen solid.

At 6.30 A.M. I crawled out of my sleeping-bag shivering with cold, and hastily pulled on my clothes, and having partaken of breakfast, started on the ascent of the pass. The faint grey light of dawn revealed a lifeless frozen land, wrapped in a mantle of chill white snow, across which shrieked and whistled a biting icy wind which cut through one like a knife, taking one's breath away, and causing one to pant and gasp like a fish out of water.

By 9 A.M. I reached the summit of the pass, from which I could look down in every direction on to a perfect sea of mountain-peaks. What the height of the pass actually was I am unable to say, for my aneroid had long since ceased to afford reliable information, playing the most surprising tricks on the very

slightest provocation; but, roughly speaking, should put it down at about 19,000 feet, as the summit of the Mersemik La (18,420 feet) lay below me, and I had a downhill walk of nearly an hour before reaching the latter. Here I rested for a short while, and then went on to a former camping-ground of mine, where there was a little grass and a tiny pool of water, which was now frozen. Waiting till the baggage hove in

sight, I went on to the village of Pobrang, which I reached about 4 P.M., a small sign of human habitation which was welcome enough after a sojourn of over three weeks in the solitary wastes of uninhabited Chang Chenmo.

On the 31st I did a long march to a little place called Mugli, which I reached at 4.30. Ram Pershad did not turn up till late in the evening, and I took him to task

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for loitering on the way, when he told me that he had stopped to inspect a Buddhist devotee who was living in a cave in the mountains, and who had, according to general belief, been sitting in a contemplative position for some years. There seems to be a tendency in Buddhism to affect this negative method of leading a virtuous or rather non-evil life, the idea being, I suppose, that as long as you are doing nothing you cannot be doing evil, and I have a very vivid recollection of the first occasion on which I came in contact with a striking example of an individual leading this curious existence. It was in the early hours of the morning, an hour or so before dawn, and the place the steep and rocky sides of Adam's Peak, over which still hangs a veil of the romance of the East. We had been climbing since midnight, ascending through the heavy silence of a still tropical night to the cooler and fresher air of the mountain-top at dawn, and were passing through a thick patch of luxuriant vegetation amid which the white moonbeans shone in silvery patches, when the dead hush all round was suddenly broken by a weird mysterious chant rising seemingly out of the solitude of the great gloomy mountain. I pulled up involuntarily, filled with a curious sensation of expectancy, aroused by the strange sounds and my mysterious surroundings, half ready to accept a supernatural explanation of what a little further investigation proved to be a quite natural phenomenon. Hidden in the deep shade of the jungle was a natural cave, in which were living half-a-dozen devotees, whose midnight prayers had thus disturbed the silence of the night; but it was still farther on, and nearer the great imprint on the summit of the sacred mountain, variously described as Adam's footstep and Mahommet's, according to the religion of the believer, that the true

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example of a negative existence was to be found. Here in a mere cleft in the rock, seated motionless with the far-away stare as of one in a trance, the dead expression of the face heightened by an unnatural. pallor, existed an individual of Chinese origin, happy in the knowledge of a blameless life. The face, which was drawn and hollow, was hardly expressive of great happiness perhaps; but this was not altogether to be wondered at if local information was to be believed, which described the subject as having been sitting in the same identical position, silent and motionless, for five years, supported only by a single teaspoonful of some Chinese elixir daily! All things taken into consideration, I felt, as I gazed on the corpse-like figure, that a more positive existence, even if it necessitated the committing of a certain amount of evil, was infinitely preferable.

While waiting for the servants and camp to come up I had a good deal of fun in stalking pigeons, which were feeding in the vicinity of the village in considerable numbers. Having only eight shot-gun cartridges I did not indulge in sporting shots, but spent most of the time in trying to approach unnoticed, and to get as many of the birds in a line as possible; for a long course of unvaried mutton diet had heightened the value of any other food in my eyes to a degree, and engendered a desperate longing for variety of any sort. On approaching the village Mon showed an alarming tendency to fly savagely at every one he saw, and succeeded in biting one luckless villager rather severely. He had evidently not got used to strangers, and seemed to strongly resent the existence of any one beyond his own little circle of acquaintances, who he evidently considered were the only beings who had any right to existence at all.

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