Many herds of fine yaks were grazing about Wallanchoon: there were a few ponies, sheep, goats, fowls, and pigs, but very little cultivation except turnips, radishes, and potatos. The yak is a very tame, domestic animal, often handsome, and a true bison in appearance; it is invaluable to these mountaineers from its strength and hardiness, accomplishing, at a slow pace, twenty miles a day, bearing either two bags of salt or rice, or four to six planks of pinewood slung in pairs along either flank. Their ears are generally pierced, and ornamented with a tuft of scarlet worsted; they have large and beautiful eyes, spreading horns, long silky black hair, and grand bushy tails: black is their prevailing colour, but red, dun, parti-coloured, and white are common. In winter, the flocks graze below 8000 feet, on account of the great quantity of snow above that height; in summer they find pasturage as high as 17,000 feet, consisting of grass and small tufted _Carices,_ on which they browse with avidity. The zobo, or cross between the yak and hill cow (much resembling the English cow), is but rarely seen in these mountains, though common in the North West Himalaya. The yak is used as a beast of burden; and much of the wealth of the people consists in its rich milk and curd, eaten either fresh or dried, or powdered into a kind of meal. The hair is spun into ropes, and woven into a covering for their tents, which is quite pervious to wind and rain;* [The latter is, however, of little consequence in the dry climate of Tibet.] from the same material are made the gauze shades for the eyes used in crossing snowy passes. The bushy tail forms the well-known "chowry" or fly-flapper of the plains of India; the bones and dung serve for fuel. The female drops one calf in April; and the young yaks are very full of gambols, tearing up and down the steep grassy and rocky slopes: their flesh is delicious, much richer and more juicy than common veal; that of the old yak is sliced and dried in the sun, forming jerked meat, which is eaten raw, the scanty proportion of fat preventing its becoming very rancid, so that I found it palatable food: it is called _schat-tcheu_ (dried meat). I never observed the yak to be annoyed by any insects; indeed at the elevation it inhabits, there are no large diptera, bots, or gadflies to infest it. It loves steep places, delighting to scramble among rocks, and to sun its black hide perched on the glacial boulders which strew the Wallanchoon flat, and on which these beasts always sleep. Their average value is from two to three pounds, but the price varies with the season. In autumn, when her calf is killed for food, the mother will yield no milk, unless the herdsman gives it the calf's foot to lick, or lays a stuffed skin before it, to fondle, which it does with eagerness, expressing its satisfaction by short grunts, exactly like those of a pig, a sound which replaces the low uttered by ordinary cattle.