My anxiety was now wound up to a pitch; I saw men with matchlocks emerging from amongst the rocks under Chomiomo, and despairing of permission being obtained, I goaded my pony with heels and stick, and dashed on up the Lachen valley, resolved to make the best of a splendid day, and not turn back till I had followed the river to the Cholamoo lakes: The Sepoys followed me a few paces, but running being difficult at 16,000 feet, they soon gave up the chase. A few miles ride in a north-east direction over an open, undulating country, brought me to the Lachen, flowing westwards in a broad, open, stony valley, bounded by Kinchinjhow on the south, (its face being as precipitous as that on the opposite side), and on the north by the Peukathlo, a low range of rocky, sloping mountains, of which the summits were 18,000 to 19,000 feet above the sea. Enormous erratic blocks of gneiss strewed the ground, which was sandy or gravelly, and cut into terraces along the shallow, winding river, the green and sparkling waters of which rippled over pebbles, or expanded into lagoons. The already scanty vegetation diminished rapidly: it consisted chiefly of scattered bushes of a dwarf scrubby honeysuckle and tufts of nettle, both so brittle as to be trodden into powder, and the short leafless twiggy _Ephedra,_ a few inches higher. The most alpine rhododendron (_R. nivale_) spread its small rigid branches close to the ground; the hemispherical _Arenaria,_ another type of sterility, rose here and there, and tufts of _Myosotis, Artemisia, Astragali,_ and _Adrosace,_ formed flat cushions level with the soil. Grass was very scarce, but a running wiry sedge (_Carex Moorcroftii_) bound the sand, like the _Carex arenaria_ of our English coasts. A more dismally barren country cannot well be conceived, nor one more strongly contrasting with the pastures of Palung at an equal elevation. The long lofty wall of Kinchinjhow and Donkia presents an effectual barrier to the transmission of moisture to the head of the Lachen valley, which therefore becomes a type of such elevations in Tibet. As I proceeded, the ground became still more sandy, chirping under the pony's feet; and where harder, it was burrowed by innumerable marmots, foxes, and the "Goomchen," or tail-less rat (_Lagomys badius_), sounding hollow to the tread, and at last becoming so dangerous that I was obliged to dismount and walk.