Lhasa and its mysteries : with a record of the expedition of 1903-1904 / by L. Austine Waddell.

  • Laurence Waddell
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lhasa and its mysteries : with a record of the expedition of 1903-1904 / by L. Austine Waddell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    105/746 page 65
    ♦ V.] UP THE TISTA GORGE *5 tributary stream, opposite the huts of a small bazaar of hillmen, who encamp here with their families in the winter months, bringing down oranges, walnuts, and other produce of the mountains for sale. They obtain most of their own food and utensils from the adjoining jungle ; and even their cooking pots and pitchers are waiting to be cut off the bamboos. Here, though no mosquitoes were noticeable, I took the precaution of dosing every- body with quinine, and of seeing that they protected themselves against this chill blast blowing through the gorge, laden with the exhalations of the rank tropical forest. Although so unhealthy, this gorge is grandly beautiful. Here the impetuous waters of the mighty Tista in their exit from their moun- tain home, no longer hemmed in by the rocks, and tired with their mad rushing down from the crags, seek the pervading languor of the plains, and stretch themselves out lazily in a broad network of sluggish channels which creep along through the dense jungle to the distant horizon. The river’s low banks and islets are covered by a dense and almost impenetrable tangle of the rankest and loftiest tropical forest, in whose deep recesses lurk almost every kind of wild beast, from tiger downwards, and the game on which they prey. Here, if provided with sufficient elephants to beat through the jungle, you may meet almost any game E A BAMBOO PITCHER.
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