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Over a more southerly and lower pass than the Maium Pass, by which, healthy, hopeful, and free, we had entered the province of Yutzang, we now left it, wounded, broken down, almost naked, and prisoners. We proceeded in a north-westerly direction. Once clear of the sacred Yutzang province, our guard behaved with rather less cruelty.
Gunpowder was so scarce that they seldom practised firing at a target. At sunrise the view of Gunkyo was magnificent, with the snow-covered mountains tinted gold and red, and reflected in their smallest detail in the still waters of the lake. We loaded our yaks, the Tibetans giving us a helping hand, and started toward the Maium Pass, following a river which throws itself into the Gunkyo Lake.
No Tibetan ever goes by one of these obos without depositing on it a white stone. The word yu in Tibetan means "middle." It is applied to this province because it occupies the centre of Tibet. To the north of the Maium lies the Doktol province.
This was evidently the way taken by the soldiers we had met on the other side of the Maium Pass. Having risen over the pass, 17,750 feet high, we saw before us an extensive valley with barren hills scattered upon it. To the south we observed a large plain some ten miles wide, with snowy peaks rising on the farther side. In front was a hill and a mani wall.
We drank of its waters at the spot where it had its birth, and then, following a marked track to the south-east, we continued our descent on a gentle incline along a grassy valley. The change in the climate between the west and south-east sides of the Maium Pass was extraordinary.
When everything was ready the five Shokas, including Kachi and Dola, left me, swearing by the sun and all that they held most sacred that they would in no way betray me to the Tibetans. Bijesing the Johari and Nattoo agreed to accompany me as far as the Maium Pass, so that my party, including myself, now was reduced to only five men.
From the Maium Pass a continuation of the Gangri chain of mountains stretched first in a south-easterly direction, then due east, in a line almost parallel to the higher southern range of the Himahlyas. Between these two ranges was an extensive plain intersected by the Brahmaputra.
I had taken a reconnoitring trip to another pass to the north-east of us, and had just returned to my men on the Maium Pass, when several of the Tibetan soldiers we had left behind rode up toward us. We waited for them. Their leader, pointing at the valley beyond the pass, cried: "That yonder is the Lhassa territory, and we forbid you to enter it!"
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