and a
purple Michaelmas daisy.

There is no village, but farmhouses are dotted about the valley, and
groves of trees--walnut and peach, and poplar and willow--enclosed
within stone walls. Wild birds that are almost tame are nesting in the
trees--black and white magpies, crested hoopoes, and turtle-doves. The
groves are irrigated like the fields, and carpeted with flowers.
Homelike butterflies frequent them, and honey-bees.

Everything is homelike. There is no mystery in the valley, except its
access, or, rather, its inaccessibility. We have come to it through snow
passes, over barren, rocky wildernesses; we have won it with toil and
suffering, through frost and rain and snow and blistering sun.

And now that we had found Arcady, I would have stayed there. Lhasa was
only four marches distant, but to me, in that mood of almost immoral
indolence, it seemed that this strip of verdure, with its happy pastoral
scenes, was the most impassable barrier that Nature had planted in our
path. Like the Tibetans, she menaced and threatened us at first, then
she turned to us with smiles and cajoleries, entreating us to stay, and
her seduction was harder to resist.

* * * * *

To trace the course of the Tsangpo River from Tibet to its outlet into
Assam has been the goal of travellers for over a century. Here is one
of the few unknown tracts of the world, where no white man has ever
penetrated. Until quite recently there was a hot controversy among
geographers as to whether the Tsangpo was the main feeder of the
Brahmaputra or reappeared in Burmah as the Irawaddy. All attempts to
explore the river from India have proved fruitless, owing to the intense
hostility of the Abor and Passi Minyang tribes, who oppose all intrusion
with their poisoned arrows and stakes, sharp and formidable as spears,
cunningly set in the ground to entrap invaders; while the vigilance of
the Lamas has made it impossible for any European to get within 150
miles of the Tsangpo Valley from Tibet. It was not until 1882 that all
doubt as to the identity of the Tsangpo and Brahmaputra was set aside by
the survey of the native explorer A. K. And the course of the
Brahmaputra, or Dihong, as it is called in Northern Assam, was never
thoroughly investigated until the explorations of Mr. Needham, the
Political Officer at Sadiya, and his trained Gurkhas, who penetrated
northwards as far as Gina, a village half a day's journey beyond Passi