o on knowing them so for twenty years, but
perhaps you will never know any one of them really intimately. To share
a post on the line of communications with one other officer for a few
months should result in an intimacy. That is almost a new military
experience.

If a post-commandant had shooting or fishing within reach of his post,
he usually, even though alone, soon found life bearable. Sometimes
foraging to collect a reserve of rations for the march down was his only
recreation, and this soon palled. He was not necessarily always alone,
for the traffic up and down the line was sometimes brisk, and he would
perhaps once or twice in a week be invaded by some officer who was
travelling up or down with the post or with a convoy.

It was my lot to be often such an invader, and for sheer genuine
hospitality commend me to the officers in charge of the posts on the
Sikkim-Tibet line of communications. It shames me to think of the way
they have entertained me, and of my utter inability to return their
hospitality. May I have a chance some time!

I had to go down to Chaksam with the mounted infantry postal escort
which travelled the whole distance in one day, going as light as
possible, my syce on one mule, my bedding on a second, and a mule driver
on a third, and without either cook or orderly. It was a case of
'sponging' wherever I went, for I knew those kind hosts down the line
would forbid me to live off bully-beef and biscuits. Looking over my
belongings before I left, I found a tinned oxtongue, which by an
oversight had remained unregarded and uneaten somewhere at the bottom of
a kit bag for many months. A convoy too had just come in, and from it I
seized one of a few pots of jam. Thus armed I visited Chaksam and
Pete-jong. These two articles were all that I could proffer in return
for hospitality, but both under present conditions were dainty rarities,
and, my hosts assured me, quite paid for my keep. At Chaksam, where the
tongue was left, and where there was a doctor as well as a
post-commandant, I was afterwards informed that the doctor, as soon as I
was gone, promptly found the post-commandant suffering from acute
enteritis, so put him on to milk diet and wolfed all the tongue himself!

The postal service from Gyantse to Lhassa was performed by mounted
infantry, each garrison _en route_ containing a detachment of mounted
infantrymen, who took the post from stage to stage. The stages were
pretty far apart. The fi