h ills as flesh is heir to.
But to fall in action is a special contingency which all soldiers have
to face, and to die by disease is the usual lot of mankind. At the loss
of comrades in these ways we grieve, but do not grieve with any
amazement. Far different from this normal grief was our feeling when we
heard that some sepoys, and with them Major Bretherton, our chief Supply
and Transport officer, had, while crossing the river, been caught by one
of several eddies formed by the sharp jutting out of a certain rocky
headland into midstream, been capsized, sucked down by the eddies, and
drowned.

The gloom that was cast was, as I have said, greater than that cast by
the loss of comrades in action. The ill luck in the case of Major
Bretherton seemed cruel. A moment before we had seen him full of health,
cheery and active, confident of seeing in a few days a happy termination
to the anxieties which in this march to Lhassa, with necessarily slender
commissariat, had been largely borne by himself. We had known him not
only as decorated for past services, but as having, during these past
few months, by his able and perpetual and unsparing work, ever daily
enhanced a reputation that was already assured. Thus here was one, full
of life and ripe for honour, cut off in his prime. Upon the Kamba-La, a
day ago, we had thought with a laugh of him as Moses viewing the
promised land, and now, as a lump came into the throat, the same thought
recurred, but this time full of sadness, for Lhassa, the promised land,
to help us to reach which he had striven for nearly a year, was the land
which he himself was not to see.

His body was carried down the Tsangpo, and we grieved at this, for we
could not pay it the honour we desired. But why should we have grieved?
For there, a pioneer always, who had ever gloried in exploring the
confines of the Indian Empire, he had but followed his bent, pursuing
the mysterious course of that river whose outlet still baffles us.

* * * * *

A melancholy sequel to the death of an officer on field service, whether
occurring in this or in any other way, is the inevitable auction of his
effects, for the conveyance of few of which to the base is transport
likely to be available. A committee of adjustment assembles, and, after
reserving only such articles as will be obviously acceptable to his
relations as mementoes and can easily be carried, puts up the remainder
to auction. To