two Gurkhas were
drowned. It seemed as if the genius of the river, offended at our
intrusion, had claimed its price and carried off the most valuable life
in the force. It was Major Bretherton's foresight more than anything
that enabled us to reach Lhasa. His loss was calamitous.

We left our camp at the ferry on July 31, and started for Lhasa, which
was only forty-three miles distant. It was difficult to believe that in
three days we would be looking on the Potala.

The Kyi Chu, the holy river of Lhasa, flows into the Tsangpo at Chushul,
three miles below Chaksam ferry, where our troops crossed. The river is
almost as broad as the Thames at Greenwich, and the stream is swift and
clear. The valley is cultivated in places, but long stretches are bare
and rocky. Sand-dunes, overgrown with artemisia scrub, extend to the
margin of cultivation, leaving a well-defined line between the green
cornfields and the barren sand. The crops were ripening at the time of
our advance, and promised a plentiful harvest.

For many miles the road is cut out of a precipitous cliff above the
river. A few hundred men could have destroyed it in an afternoon, and
delayed our advance for another week. Newly-built sangars at the
entrance of the gorge showed that the Tibetans had intended to hold it.
But they left the valley in a disorganized state the day we reached the
Tsangpo. Had they fortified the position, they might have made it
stronger than the Karo la.

The heat of the valley was almost tropical. Summer by the Kyi Chu River
is very different from one's first conceptions of Tibet. To escape the
heat, I used to write my diary in the shade of gardens and willow
groves. Hoopoes, magpies, and huge black ravens became inquisitive and
confidential. I have a pile of little black notebooks I scribbled over
in their society, dirty and torn and soiled with pressed flowers. For a
picture of the valley I will go to these. One's freshest impressions are
the best, and truer than reminiscences.

NETHANG.

In the most fertile part of the Kyi Chu Valley, where the fields are
intersected in all directions by clear-running streams bordered with
flowers, in a grove of poplars where doves were singing all day long, I
found Atisa's tomb.

It was built in a large, plain, barn-like building, clean and
sweet-smelling as a granary, and innocent of ornament outside and in. It
was the only clean and simple place devoted to religion I had seen in
Tibet.