Tingri is a place of some importance, with a considerable trade at certain seasons of the year. It is the last place of any size on this side of the Nepalese frontier and boasts of a military governor. The garrison, however, when we visited it, consisted only of a sergeant and four or five soldiers. There were about three hundred houses in Tingri, all clustered together on the slopes of a small isolated hill standing in the middle of the great plain. On the top of the hill was the old Chinese fort, now all falling into ruin, but still littered with papers and books, written in Chinese characters, left behind by the Chinese on their hasty departure. Inside were quaint mural frescoes of curious old men riding stags or winged dragons painted in many colours. All the way up the valley of the Bhong-chu we had seen ruins of walls and evidences of much fighting. These all dated back, we were told, to the time of the Nepalese invasions of Tibet in the eighteenth century when the Gurkhas penetrated so far into Tibet that they actually got to Shigatse, and the Tibetans had to call upon the Chinese Empire for help. The Chinese came into the country with a large army, defeated the Gurkhas, drove them out of Tibet and crossed the Himalayas with a considerable army into Nepal, an extraordinary military feat considering the enormous difficulty of moving an army in these unhospitable regions over the high mountain passes through which it is approached. The Chinese, after this, never left Tibet until they were driven out by the Tibetans only a few years ago. In the hills round Tingri we came across many evidences of the fighting which then took place. This probably accounted for the large number of ruined and deserted villages that we saw in the valleys around. At the foot of the hill was a large Chinese rest-house which was only used to house Tibetan officials when they came there on duty. The Tibetans themselves did not like to live in or use the place, as many Chinese had died there and they thought that their ghosts haunted the spot. This rest-house was, however, swept out and prepared for our reception, as we had told the Tibetans that we should probably stay there for some time and should want a house to protect us from the wind and to provide a dark room for developing our photographs. The rest-house consisted of three courtyards in the outer one we put the coolies, in the middle one the surveyors, and the inner one we kept for ourselves. In appearance the building was quite picturesque with its mural paintings of flying dogs and fierce dragons; but in spite of its picturesqueness outside and its handsome appearance, the rooms inside were small, and when the rain came it poured through the roof and our beds had to be shifted many times during the night to avoid the drips of water. It however provided an excellent dark room for us after we had well plastered the walls, the floor and the ceiling with mud and got rid of the dust of ages.