g to see each column onwards. They were
got through without difficulty--no one would stay at Gnatong an hour
longer than he could help. So I suppose I performed my share of the work
all right, though it was done from bed. There was no one there to
supervise my work, and I therefore did not have to go upon the sick
list; but even so the feeling of being incapacitated by some accidental
ailment at the beginning of an expedition, and of its possibly
preventing you from reaching the front, is one of the most trying of
ordeals.

The number of victims of mountain sickness at Gnatong was considerable.
There was an enterprising Parsi merchant who had opened a store there.
His wealth of tinned provisions and whiskey lay in the shop
comparatively disregarded, but he did a roaring trade in phenacetin and
Stearne's headache cure among the mountain sick.

Mountain sickness is like measles. If you get a really good go of it,
you are not likely to be soon attacked again by it, even though you
have to ascend to an altitude far higher than that at which you
originally succumbed. Many a man lay gasping for several days at
Gnatong, which was only twelve thousand odd feet up, and later on
climbed the Karo-La (16,800 feet) on his own flat feet, smiling.

'The last long streak of snow' was just fading as I reached Gnatong at
the end of May. It was not very cold, but bitterly raw and damp. I
occupied a hut, which contained a fireplace, and would have made myself
cosy and warm if the fire had not always smoked. This involved that
distressing dilemma between having a fire and also a roomful of smoke,
which had to be periodically emptied by opening the door and window, and
so letting in cold and rain and mist, or sitting in a chilly damp
atmosphere without a fire, but, on the other hand, without either smoke
or violent draughts. This is a petty detail, but I mention it, since to
the many people who spent their time mainly in posts on the line of
communication, and lived in huts, this must have been an ever-recurring
dilemma and a primary feature of their existence.

Gnatong had been an important place during the last Sikkim Expedition.
For the purposes of the present Expedition it has been renovated. The
men so employed had been merry fellows, with eyes for that nice,
innocent, feeble, but well-meant joke, which you appreciate on service,
even though in peace time you might elect to be bored by it. These hut
builders and road makers had been