ere never wanting. But after a pleasant talk of many hours
the purple and fine linen used to ride away baffled.

We halted at Nagartse for two nights. We found it a useful place to have
captured. Unfortunately it contained little grain, of which now we were
growing very short, but we found in it a large storehouse of bagged
tsampa, which was very welcome. It proved also to have been used by the
enemy as an arsenal, and several boxes of gunpowder were discovered in
it, hidden away in a barn among quantities of straw. We had grown wary
in searching jongs since the day, a fortnight or so before, when some
accident such as a lighted match falling through a flooring in
Gyantse-jong had caused the explosion of a store of gunpowder which had
done much havoc among a party of Fusiliers close by, several of whom
had been seriously injured.

The gunpowder found at Nagartse was destroyed by us, and certain
portions of the buildings demolished, the latter process producing a
fine haul of firewood in the shape of the beams and rafters of the
demolished houses. That process of demolition, in which the Sappers and
Miners were past masters, is one of the dirtiest jobs I know. I was
there to collect wood from the _debris_, which the Sappers and Miners
demolished. As each wall falls it throws up a cloud of dust, and the
filth of ages in small particles enters your eyes, your ears, your hair,
and your mouth, and covers your clothes: no small matter when the
clothes in which you stand may be the only suit you possess, and the
function of having a bath cannot be undertaken lightly, but needs due
warning, ample preparation, and assured leisure.

Many of us who serve in India have, for considerations of health, which
to the Englishman at home seem absurd, but are nevertheless proved by
Anglo-Indian experience to be imperative, had to abjure the cold bath.
For such a hot bath is the only form of complete ablution. Your tent, if
you do not exceed your scale of transport, will be small and will have
no bath-room attached; then for preparing the bath, you have to remove
all the ordinary contents of the tent outside into the open. Then will
follow the setting in position of whatever form of camp bath you may
possess, or may be able to borrow. Meanwhile an extra allowance of
firewood has to be procured and the water made hot. By the time all is
ready and you are beginning to take off your clothes a considerable time
will have passed. If, during th