what the medical officers thought
desirable, one accosted commanding officers, and asked with one's best
shop-walker's manner what they would like to-day. A few hundredweight of
jam and pickles would be doled out for the asking, or, in the case of
native troops, similar quantities of tea and ghi and goor. The coolis
were my best customers. The amount of tea and goor they took away and
consumed with benefit to themselves was surprising. They worked all the
better for it and marched into Gyantse carrying record loads.

The stores still left over at each place were solemnly presented to the
local peasants who came up, and, regarding the affair as a huge joke,
went away laden with bundles selected at random from, as it were, a huge
bran-pie. Rum was withheld from them, but I should have liked to see the
effect of their consumption of some of the things they got, as, for
instance, of an unsuspecting draught of neat lime-juice, or a mouthful
of chillies.

So on we marched over that stiff pass into Pete-jong, along Lake Palti
shining in this clear-set wintry weather with its true turquoise
colours, past Nagartse and up through the barren gorge that leads to the
summit of the Karo-La, down the Karo-La regretfully, doubting whether
we should ever reach such heights again, into the Ralung plain, and down
the long glen to Gyantse.

Our appearance in those days was not spick and span. We were very much
out at elbows, the breeches of both soldiers and followers were
frequently patched with odd bits of Tibetan woollen cloth, or even in
some cases with bits of the gunny of gunny bags. I have known the red
cloth of the typical lama's robe adapted to these purposes. With wear it
turns into a cherry colour. My own orderly, who was fitted out with a
complete pair of continuations of this cloth, looked in the distance
like a trooper of the 11th Hussars (the overalls of that regiment being
famous for that colour).

More curious still were the additions to the wardrobe in the shape of
blankets and sentries' cloaks, which we brought from Lhassa, the woollen
goods of that town being warm and serviceable, but rather outlandish.
The sentries' cloaks were merely oblong pieces of cloth with a hole in
the centre, through which the sentry put his head, and of all sorts of
colours--quite enough in themselves to frighten the nocturnal miscreant.

But most curious sight of all, if one could have looked on from the
outside, would have been the col