After boiling my thermometer on these occasions, I generally made a
little tea for the party; a refreshment to which they looked forward
with child-like eagerness. The fairness with which these good-hearted
people used to divide the scanty allowance, and afterwards the
leaves, which are greatly relished, was an engaging trait in their
simple character: I have still vividly before me their sleek swarthy
faces and twinkling Tartar eyes, as they lay stretched on the ground
in the sun, or crouched in the sleet and snow beneath some sheltering
rock; each with his little polished wooden cup of tea, watching my
notes and instruments with curious wonder, asking, "How high are we?"
"How cold is it?" and comparing the results with those of other
stations, with much interest and intelligence.

On the 11th June, my active people completed a most ingenious bridge
of branches of trees, bound by withes of willow; by which I crossed
to the north bank, where I camped on an immense flat terrace at the
junction of the rivers, and about fifty feet above their bed.
The first step or ascent from the river is about five feet high, and
formed of water-worn boulders, pebbles, and sand, scarcely
stratified: the second, fully 1000 yards broad, is ten feet high, and
swampy. The uppermost is fifteen feet above the second, and is
covered with gigantic boulders, and vast rotting trunks of fallen
pines, buried in an impenetrable jungle of dwarf small-leaved holly
and rhododendrons. The surface was composed of a rich vegetable
mould, which, where clear of forest, supported a rank herbage, six to
eight feet high.* [This consisted of grasses, sedges, _Bupleurum,_
rhubarb, _Ranunculus, Convallaria, Smilacina,_ nettles, thistles,
_Arum,_ balsams, and the superb yellow _Meconopsis Nepalensis,_ whose
racemes of golden poppy-like flowers were as broad as the palm of the
hand; it grows three and even six feet high, and resembles a small