That evening an amusing thing happened in the kitchen. One of our cooks was heating up a tin of tinned fish and had put it in some hot water without previously opening it. When he thought it was sufficiently hot, he started to open it, with the result that it exploded violently, covering him and every one else in the kitchen with small pieces of fish. I was able then to explain to the Tibetans who were carrying our loads that our stores were very dangerous, and that if any were at any time stolen, they would be liable to explode and hurt them. It was, of course, the rarefied air that had caused this, for Dochen is at a height of 14,700 feet above sea level. Every day on from now the wind used to blow with great violence all the afternoon, but would die down after sunset. It must have been of a local nature caused by the rapid changes from high temperature to low, because the clouds above at the same time were hardly moving. I sent back Dorje, one of our cooks, from this place, as it was the fourth time that he had been drunk, and this I hoped would be a lesson to the others. We now left the Lhasa Road and turned off Westwards, having henceforward to rely on our tents. [Illustration: LOADING UP AT DOCHEN.] From Dochen to Khe was a short march of 11 miles over the Dug Pass, 16,400 feet. I did not follow the road taken by the transport animals, but took a local guide and rode over the hill-tops in search of ovis ammon. I did not see any, however, though we sighted two or three goa, but they were very wild and would not allow me to approach within 500 yards of them. There were numbers of blue hares, however, and some ram chakor, the Himalayan snow cock. But beyond this the hillsides were very bare of game. There were pin-cushions of a beautiful little blue sedum growing at a height of over 17,000 feet, also there was a big red stonecrop. Khe is now only a small and dirty village with practically no water except a half-dried muddy pond, but at one time it must have been a place of some importance, as ruins and buildings of considerable size extend over an area of more than a mile. The Kala-tso evidently at one time came right up to this ruined town of Khetam, and the fact that it is deserted now is probably due to the shrinkage of the lake. This was only one of the many signs of desiccation that we saw in our travels in Tibet. There were some curious ruins which looked like old crenellated walls, but these walls were only places on which barley dough used to be exposed to feed the crows as a sign of prosperity. It was a curious custom and could only have prevailed in a very fertile valley, which this place is no longer. The age of the city I could not find out, but the few survivors told me that the holy shrine at Tashilumpo, which now is at Shigatse, ought to have been built here. According to a local legend, there was a certain stone in Khetam shaped like a ewe's-womb, and one day a donkey driver finding that his loads were unequal in