haps a few of its
luxuries. Kasi, being an important official, receives from the Bhutan
Government forty maunds of barley and forty maunds of rice annually. He
receives, in addition, a commission on the trade disputes that he
decides in proportion to their importance. He is now an invaluable
servant of the British Government. At his nod the barren solitudes round
Phari are wakening into life. From the fort bastions one sees sometimes
on the hills opposite an indistinct black line, like a caterpillar
gradually assuming shape. They are Kasi's yaks coming from some blind
valley which no one but a hunter or mountaineer would have imagined to
exist. Ponies, grain, and fodder are also imported from Bhutan and sold
to the mutual gratification of the Bhutanese and ourselves. The yaks are
hired and employed on the line of communications.

It is to be hoped that the Bhutanese, when they hear of our good prices,
will send supplies over the frontier to hasten our advance. But we must
take care than no harm befalls Kasi for his good services. When I asked
him how he stood with the Tibetan Government, he laid his hand in a
significant manner across his throat.

LINGMATHANG,
_February._

Before entering the bare, unsheltered plateau of Tibet, the road to
Lhasa winds through seven miles of pine forest, which recalls some of
the most beautiful valleys of Switzerland.

The wood-line ends abruptly. After that there is nothing but barrenness
and desolation. The country round Chumbi is not very thickly forested.
There are long strips of arable land on each side of the road, and
villages every two or three miles. The fields are terraced and enclosed
within stone walls. Scattered on the hillside are stone-built houses,
with low, over-hanging eaves, and long wooden tiles, each weighed down
with a gray boulder. One might imagine one's self in Kandersteg or
Lauterbrunnen; only lofty praying flags and _mani_-walls brightly
painted with Buddhistic pictures and inscriptions dispel the illusion.

There is no lack of colour. In the winter months a brier with large red
berries and a low, foxy-brown thornbush, like a young osier in March,
lend a russet hue to the landscape. Higher on the hills the withered
grass is yellow, and the blending of these quiet tints, russet, brown,
and yellow, gives the valley a restful beauty; but in cloud it is
sombre enough.

Three years ago I visited Yatung in May. In springtime there is a
profusion o