As the sun went down it became bitterly
cold, and we found the natives even, shuddering under the influences
of the snowy wind, which, setting in from the mountains, appeared to
blow from all points of the compass at one and the same time. What
the village of Pandras must be in mid-winter it is hard to imagine,
so covered with snow as the mountains around it are even in August,
and so bleak and so barren the valley in which it is situated.
In spite of the cold, we astonished the entire swaddled population
by taking off our clothes, and bathing in a little crystal stream
close by: two operations, in all probability, which they themselves
had never perpetrated within the memory of the oldest inhabitant,
This feat accomplished, we were much astonished by the arrival of a
RARA AVIS, in the shape of a British traveller, from the direction
of Ladak. He turned out to be an officer of the Government survey,
now being carried on in the mountains, and we took the opportunity
of deriving from him all the information we could, relative to the
prospect before us.
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