miles--the path following the right bank of the Bhong-chu the whole way. In places the river was as much as 200 yards wide and flowed very sluggishly. We were told that the waters were very low, but that next month, when the rains had broken, the river often filled the whole of the bottom of the valley. On the way we passed some very handsome black-necked cranes as large as the Saurus crane. These had black heads and bills, with red eyes, light grey bodies and black tails with fine feathers. On this march the midges were dreadfully annoying the whole way, and we were surrounded with clouds of them the whole time. Their bite was very tiresome and extremely irritating. On the way we passed a Mongolian who had taken eleven months in coming from Lhasa and who was on his way to Nepal. His method of progression was by throwing himself at full length down on the ground. He then got up and at the spot where his hands touched the ground repeated the motion again. As we approached Tingri, the valley widened out and bent round to the South. Tingri itself was situated on the side of a small hill in the middle of a great plain, from which, looking to the South, was visible the wonderful chain of snowy peaks, many of them over 25,000 feet in height, which extends Westwards from Mount Everest. We crossed the Ra-chu--a tributary of the Bhong-chu, partly by bridges and partly by fords; it was split up into a number of small and very muddy channels that took their rise from the Kyetrak Glacier. Tingri was to be our first base for reconnoitring the Northern and North-western approaches to Mount Everest. It was June 19 when we arrived there, so that it had taken us just a month's travelling from Darjeeling to perform this part of our journey. CHAPTER IV TINGRI AND THE COUNTRY TO THE SOUTH