The village of Hango, notwithstanding its great elevation, has a considerable extent of cultivation, though I think the corn was less luxuriant than at lower levels. The wheat was still green, and rather scanty, a good deal of a wild oat (perhaps _Avena fatua_) being mixed with it; but the barley was stronger and more productive. There was also a number of fields of _Hordeum Ægiceras_, that curious awnless monstrous barley, which seems peculiar to the higher regions of Tibet, where it is very frequently cultivated. This grain was much further advanced than the wheat, being nearly ripe. The arable lands of Hango are nearly destitute of trees, a few willows being the only arboreous vegetation. They are abundantly supplied with water, circulating in copious rills among the different fields, which are disposed in terraces one above another, faced by walls about three feet in height. On the margins of the cultivation, stimulated by the moisture derived from the irrigation, there was a very abundant growth of shrubs, and of luxuriant herbaceous plants. The gooseberry, _Hippophaë_, and rose, were the shrubs, and several large _Umbelliferæ_, one of which was closely allied to the _Assafoetida_, a tall _Thalictrum_, a yellow-flowered _Medicago_, _Verbascum Thapsus_, two species of thistle, the common henbane, dock, mint, _Plantago_, and various species of _Artemisia_, were the most common herbaceous plants.
[Sidenote: HANGO VALLEY. _August, 1847._]
On the 24th of August we proceeded to Lio, a village on the right or west bank of the Piti river. The road crosses the small stream which runs past Hango, a little below the village, and gradually ascends the slope of the hill on its left bank. Close to the stream there is a bank of clayey alluvium, with stones, and traces of it may be seen at intervals for some distance down the valley, but it is nowhere of any great thickness. The hill along which the road lay was composed of a cherty sandstone of a light-blue colour, often nearly white; in fragments, and especially when pulverized, it was quite so; and being extremely brittle, the slopes were covered with fine white dust, the glare of which, in the bright sunshine, was very unpleasant. On this gravelly ascent the vegetation was equally scanty, and much the same in character as at moderate elevations on the two previous days; a large thistle, species of _Artemisia_, _Chenopodiaceæ_, and a spinous _Astragalus_, being the most abundant plants.