CHAPTER XII.
The World of Snow.
According to the stock of information I had gathered, I was always to head north until I came to Lake Manasarovara, and the point I had now to decide was how I might make the shortest cut to that body of fresh water. There was nothing to guide me but my compass and a survey I took of the vast expanse of snow to a great distance before me. The best I could do was guess-work. Following the impulses of instinct more than anything else, except the general direction indicated by the compass, I decided on taking a north-westerly course in making the descent. So I restarted, with the luggage on my back.
So far my route had lain principally on the sunny side of the mountains and the snow, at the most, had not been more than five or six inches deep; but from now onward I had to proceed along the reverse side, covered over with an abundance of the crystal layers, the unguessable thickness of which furnished me with a constant source of anxiety. In some places my feet sank fourteen or fifteen inches in the snow, and in others they did not go down more than seven or eight inches. This wading in the snow was more fatiguing than I had imagined at first, and the staff again rendered me great service; once or twice I found it a difficult job to extricate myself, when my foot, after stamping through the layers of snow, wedged itself tightly between two large pieces of hard stone. This sort of trudging lasted for nearly three miles down a gradual descent, at the end of which I emerged on a snowless beach of loose pebbles and stones of different sizes. By that time my Tibetan boots had become so far worn out, that at places my feet came into direct contact with the hard
