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COLD.
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Munnak,
Thok Ragyok, Thok Ragung, and Thok Dalung. .... The miners' camp at
Thok Jarlung, according to the measurements of the Pundits, is 16,300
feet above the sea level.
The cold is intense, and the miners in winter are thickly clad with furs.
The
miners do not merely remain under ground when at work, but their small
black tents, which are made of a felt-like material manufactured from
the hair of the Yak, are set in a series of pits, with steps leading
down to them .... seven or eight feet below the surface of
the ground.....Spite of the cold the diggers
prefer
working in winter; and the number of their tents, which in summer
amounts to 300, rises to nearly 600 in winter. They prefer the winter
as the frozen soil then stands well, and is not .likely to trouble them
much by falling in.
They are occasionally attacked by bands of robbers who carry off their gold.
Sir Henry Rawlinson's remarks on these reports of the Pundits' researches and travels are as follows :•—
Now,
then, for the first time, we have an explanation of the circumstances
under which so large a quantity of gold is, as is well known to be the
case, exported to the west from Khoten, and finds its way into India
from Thibet; and it is probable that the search for gold in this region
has been going on from a very remote antiquity, since no one can read
the ex-Pundit's account of the Thibetan miners " living in tents some
seven or eight feet below the surface of the ground, and collecting the
excavated earth in heaps previous to washing the gold out of the soil,"
without being reminded of the description which Herodotus gives of the
" ants in the land of the Indians border-
* Pall Mall Gazette, March 16, 1869, quoted in "Indian Antiquary," vol. iv. p. 225.
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