positively declined to sanction their crossing into Tibet. Their plan of keeping to the west side of the Chumbi valley, while avoiding Chumbi, was declared im¬ practicable; they must, said the Raja, descend to the Tista valley and follow it up to Lachung if they wished to reach the Tankrapass. On August 28th they rode up to the pass called Cho-la, 15,000 feet above the sea, but it was misty and there was no view. "At the frontier chait (or boundary pillar) we found an officer and a guard of about fifteen men, who were civil and greatly relished some whisky we had with us.” At Chumanako Elwes shot some birds, including the Kashmir dipper (Cinclus Cashmiriensis), Next day they started down the Cho-la valley for Tamlung, the Raja’s capital, and thence marched northward for four days, “ through much rain and swarms of leeches,” to Chungtam, at the confluence of the Lachen and Lachung rivers which form the Tista. They struck up the valley of the eastern stream, the Lachung, to the village of that name, where they camped on September 7th. “ Elwes went off to visit the Tankra pass on the second day, but I had been so much punished by the leeches in the hot valleys that I thought it advisable to rest a little.” The travellers met again higher up the valley at Yeomatong on September 13th. Elwes had been disappointed in his expectations of Ovis ammon, but he had obtained several good birds, Lerva, Accentor Nipalensis, Fringillauda nemoricola and Alsocomus Hodgsoni, the speckled wood-pigeon, “which it was rather surprising to find at an elevation of 13,000 or 14,000 feet.” The march was resumed on September 15th up the valley to Momay Sandong, about 15,000 feet, where the travellers heard that a Tibetan officer had come to meet them at the Donkia pass, ten miles away. Lest lie should turn them back, they inspected the Sibu-la, the pass 17,000 feet high leading over the mountain barrier between the Lachung and Lachen valleys, but they found it impracticable for laden coolies.
On September 17th they rode up to the Donkia-la and were received politely by the Tibetan guard. But their request for permission to cross the frontier and take the short and easy route westward to the Kongra Lama pass—a route traversed in 1849 by Hooker in the reverse direction—was refused. “ There was no threat of stopping us by force; the people only said 'If you choose to go by force we cannot stop you, but all our heads will be cut off.'" They waited three days and then argued the point with the Suba or Governor of Kambajong, who had now arrived on the scene. But he protested that he had direct orders to forbid them passage, However, they were rewarded by a superb view from the top of the pass, 18,500 feet high, "Cholamu lake is in front beneath the feet of the spectator; beyond is a desert of rounded hills. Farther away range alter range of mountains, some of them covered with snow, extend to a distance which the eye cannot appreciate. The total change of colour and form from the valleys of Sikkim, the utter barrenness, the intense clearness of the atmosphere, produce such an effect as if one were gazing into another world." “It is doubtless one of the most remarkable landscapes in the world and alone worth the journey from Darjeeling in order to see it,” says Mr, Blanford, and Elwes fully concurred in his opinion,
Elwes was, after all, fated to enter the forbidden land. “He had strolled out up the side valley which branches off from the Lachung to the west close to our camp and leads to a little-known pass called Sang-la, two or three miles west of Donkia pass. He had gone out without any intention of doing more than looking at the valley; indeed, being rather lame from leech-bites, he had stayed behind in order to rest, but he found himself so close to the frontier that he went on to the top of the pass, and then, seeing Cholamu lake beneath him, and no Tibetan in sight, the temptation to go on was irresistible and he descended to the lake, partly by a snow slope, partly over a shoot of stones. There he could find no one; he
had expected to find the Tibetan encampment, but that was high up on Donkia,