on our return large flights came in. But during the summer months
nothing remained except the geese and sheldrake and the goosander, which
is resident in Tibet and the Himalayas. I take it that no respectable
duck spends the summer south of the Tengri Nor. At Lhasa, mallard, teal,
gadwall, and white-eyed pochard were coming in from the north as we
were leaving in the latter half of September, and followed us down to
the plains. They make shorter flights than I imagined, and longer stays
at their fashionable Central Asian watering-places.

We marched three days along the banks of the Yamdok Tso, and halted a
day at Nagartse. Duck were not plentiful on the lake. Black-headed gulls
and redshanks were common. The fields of blue borage by the villages
were an exquisite sight. On the 22nd we reached Pehte. The jong, a
medieval fortress, stands out on the lake like Chillon, only it is more
crumbling and dilapidated. The courtyards are neglected and overgrown
with nettles. Soldiers, villagers, both men and women, had run away to
the hills with their flocks and valuables. Only an old man and two boys
were left in charge of the chapel and the fort. The hide fishing-boats
were sunk, or carried over to the other side. On July 24 we left the
lake near the village of Tamalung, and ascended the ridge on our left to
the Khamba Pass, 1,200 feet above the lake level. A sudden turn in the
path brought us to the saddle, and we looked down on the great river
that has been guarded from European eyes for nearly a century. In the
heart of Tibet we had found Arcadia--not a detached oasis, but a
continuous strip of verdure, where the Tsangpo cleaves the bleak hills
and desert tablelands from west to east.

All the valley was covered with green and yellow cornfields, with
scattered homesteads surrounded by clusters of trees, not dwarfish and
stunted in the struggle for existence, but stately and spreading--trees
that would grace the valley of the Thames or Severn.

We had come through the desert to Arcady. When we left Phari, months and
months before, and crossed the Tang la, we entered the desert.

Tuna is built on bare gravel, and in winter-time does not boast a blade
of grass. Within a mile there are stunted bushes, dry, withered, and
sapless, which lend a sustenance to the gazelle and wild asses, beasts
that from the beginning have chosen isolation, and, like the Tibetans,
who people the same waste, are content with spare diet so long as th