52 THE PULSE OF ASIA
fall and dried for the sheep and goats. Long ago, a vanished glacier ground its way slowly down from the mountains, cutting off projecting spurs, smoothing and broadening the valley-floor, steepening the walls, and changing the valley from a gorge with a V-shaped cross-section to a typical glacial trough, U-shaped, with well-marked shoulders at the top of the U.
A few miles farther downstream, at the point where the old glacier came to an end, the trough changed suddenly to a gorge, and we found that our U became a V. The road ceased to follow the broad valley-floor near the river, for there was no room beside the water. The stream flowed between the steep cliffs of narrow terraces of gravel, like those of Kashmir, which filled the bottom of the V. Along these we made our way, finding the path level and easy except where it crossed the narrow gullies of frequent tributary torrents. At Karbu we found the terraces pitted with numerous tunnels, dug for gold which is contained in the gravel. There we met an English engineer prospecting for a mining company. He was disgusted with the meagre quantity of gold ; it was not worth looking at, he said. He had found just one thing that interested him—a fragment of good gold ore said to have come from a mine near Lhassa owned by Buddhist lamas. The engineer was going home to tell his company that Tibet was the place to hunt for gold.
The terraces furnish not only the one source of mineral wealth in this poor region, but the only level land available for agriculture. Though they are extremely narrow and rocky, fields and hamlets are located upon them wherever water is available for irrigation. The difficulty expe-
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