The peregrination round Tize usually takes three days, though some accomplish it in two days, and under favourable circumstances it has even been done in one day. It is usual for the pilgrims to say certain prayers and make sacrifices as they proceed, and the more fanatical perform the journey serpentwise, lying flat on the ground; others, again, do it on their hands and knees, and others walking backwards. Tize, or Kelas, has an elevation of 21,830 feet, and Nandiphu, W. of it, 19,440 feet, while N.W. of the sacred mountain are visible other summits 20,460 feet, 19,970 feet, and 20,280 feet. Animal life seemed to abound, for while I was sketching the panorama before me, a snow leopard bounded gracefully past us. I had a shot or two at _thar_, and we saw any number of _kiang_. We found rhubarb, which seemed to be thriving, at so high an elevation as 17,000 feet, and quantities of yellow flowers in the same locality and at the same elevation; and at 19,000 feet I netted two couples of small white and black butterflies. They seemed to have great difficulty in flying, and hardly rose more than two or three inches off the ground, flapping their wings irregularly; they seldom flew more than a few feet, and then remained motionless for long periods before they attempted to fly again. I had come across the same kind of butterfly at lower altitudes, 18,600 feet and 17,000 feet, and I invariably found them in couples. On nearing the lakes, the atmosphere seemed saturated with moisture, for no sooner had the sun gone down than there was a heavy dew, which soaked our blankets and clothes. We were at 16,550 feet in a narrow marshy creek in which we had descended _a pic_ from the last mountain range. From the summit of the range we had seen many columns of smoke rising from the neighbourhood of the Rakas Lake, and we judged that again we must proceed with great caution. We cooked our food, and in the middle of the night, for greater safety, we shifted our camp on the summit of the plateau in a North-Easterly direction, and continued our journey in the morning, high above the magnificent blue sheet of the Devil's Lake with its pretty islands. "Sahib, do you see that island?" exclaimed the Kutial, pointing at a barren rock that emerged from the lake. "On it," he continued, "lives a hermit Lama, a saintly man. He has been there alone for many years, and he is held in great veneration by the Tibetans. He exists almost entirely on fish, and occasional swan's eggs, and only in winter, when the lake is frozen, is communication established with the shore, and supplies of _tsamba_ are brought to him, for they have no boats in Rakastal, nor any way of constructing rafts, owing to the absence of wood. The hermit sleeps in a cave, but generally comes out in the open to pray to Buddha." During the following night, when everything was still, a slight breeze blowing from the North brought to us, faint and indistinct, the broken howls of the hermit.