nerally as
may save the farm from utter ruin, and to return periodically with the
latest news of the foe. That seemed to be the idea which dominated the
Tibetans in this matter, and perhaps it was a sound one. I can certainly
imagine no more effective 'chowkidar' upon a village than an ancient,
toothless, slatternly Tibetan woman, who greets you with tongue out and
thumbs upturned (the conventional symbols of submission), and weeps long
and loud from the moment you approach her until you leave her. I believe
Aristotle has defined tragedy as 'a purging of the emotions with
sympathy and a kind of horror.' According to this definition the sight
of these old women was essentially tragic. You went to a village hoping
to find in it a stock of good things, and you found only this old woman
and nothing else. You were sorry for the old girl, of course; but when
you saw the filth encasing her and the lice enveloping her, you were
filled indeed with 'a kind of horror,' and rode away promptly with your
emotions thoroughly purged after the correct Aristotelian method. The
Tibetan of course knew that this would happen, and this was why he sent
his old woman to guard his property.

We hoped not to draw blank at the next halt, for here we came to the
village Pete, surmounted by Pete-jong, an important landmark on our
route. But now we began to discover that some one had stolen a march on
us, and was looting ahead of us. It appeared that, of the army that had
opposed us at the Karo-La, one portion had disappeared over the glacier,
but that another was in retreat towards Lhassa, and was feeding itself
somewhat ruthlessly on the country as it went. From reports that reached
us, it appeared also that the paymasters of the Tibetan army regarded
their duties lightly, and that the force in front of us, consisting
mainly of mercenaries, had no compunction in looting not only the bare
means of subsistence, but also any supplementary stores which by a
generous calculation might seem equivalent in value to the arrears of
their pay. Even so it was not so much what they took that spoilt our
chance of finding stores to purchase, as the fact that each act of
looting on their part at once became known in all the villages ahead,
with the result that stores of all kinds, but especially grain and
tsampa, were being hidden away from the reach of either the Tibetan army
or ourselves with the utmost possible despatch. Hence our prospects
again became far fr