[79] Snow covers the ground at Yangma from December till April, and the falls are said to be very heavy, at times amounting to 12 feet in depth.
I had taken three days’ food to Yangma, and stayed there as long as it lasted: the rest of my provisions I had left below the first moraine, where a lateral valley leads east over the Nango pass to the Kambachen valley, which lay on the route back to Sikkim.
I was premature in complaining of my Wallanchoon tents, those provided for me at Yangma being infinitely worse, mere rags, around which I piled sods as a defence from the insidious piercing night-wind that descended from the northern glaciers in calm, but most keen, breezes. There was no food to be procured in the village, except a little watery milk, and a few small watery potatos. The latter have only very recently been introduced amongst the Tibetans, from the English garden at the Nepalese capital, I believe, and their culture has not spread in these regions further east than Kinchinjunga, but they will very soon penetrate into Tibet from Dorjiling, or eastward from Nepal. My private stock of provisions—consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my kind friend Mr. Hodgson—had fallen very low; and I here found to my dismay that of four remaining two-pound cases, provided as meat, three contained prunes, and one _“dindon aux truffes!”_ Never did luxuries come more inopportunely; however the greasy French viand served for many a future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my rice, and according to the theory of chemists, to supply animal heat in these frigid regions. As for my people, they were not accustomed to much animal food; two pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their common diet under cold and fatigue. The poorer Tibetans, especially, who undergo great privation and toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and a very little butter and salt: this is not only the case with those amongst whom I mixed so much, but is also mentioned by MM. Huc and Gabet, as having been observed by them in other parts of Tibet.
On the 1st of December I visited the village and terrace, and proceeded to the head of the Yangma valley, in order to ascend the Kanglachem pass as far as practicable. The houses are low, built of stone, of no particular shape, and are clustered in groups against the steep face of the terrace; filthy lanes wind amongst them, so narrow, that if you are not too tall, you look into the slits of windows on either hand, by turning your head, and feel the noisome warm air in whiffs against your face. Glacial boulders lie scattered throughout the village, around and beneath the clusters of houses, from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the native rock. I entered one house by a narrow low door through walls four feet thick, and found myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood, and dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story, which was quite dark, and as I stood in it my head was in the upper, to which I ascended by a notched pole (like that in the picture of a Kamschatk house in Cook’s voyage), and went into a small low room. The inmates looked half asleep, they were intolerably indolent and filthy, and were employed in spinning wool and smoking. A hole in the wall of the upper apartment led me on to the stone roof of the neighbouring house, from which I passed to the top of a glacial boulder, descending thence by rude steps to the narrow alley. Wishing to see as much as I could, I was led on a winding course through, in and out, and over the tops of the houses of the village, which alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or gravel pit, and gipsies living in old lime-kilns; and of all sorts of odd places that are turned to account as human habitations.