mbi valley
than in any other part of Eastern Tibet, except Lhassa itself. The
number of Chinamen actually resident in the Chumbi valley is itself
large, and there seems to have been a great deal of inter-marriage here
at one time or another between the local Tibetans and Chinamen proper,
the women of such unions having of course been Tibetan, since the
Chinaman, when he goes roaming, invariably, I believe, leaves his women
folk at home.

The following day brought me into Chumbi. It was pleasant to be in a big
camp again, to join a large mess, and get the latest news from
headquarters.

The valley itself was a delightful spot to have reached. After the
unpleasantnesses of those heights that one had traversed, this valley
seemed a sheer Garden of Eden. It was a place to dally in, in which to
wander about accompanied by your best girl, picking wild flowers for
her, and listening with her to the humming of the bees, and the bubbling
of laughing brooks, rather than a place in which to concentrate an army
for an advance into the enemy's country.

Chumbi would make a glorious summer sanitarium for British troops in the
hot weather, provided that that projected route, which is to avoid the
passes and run through Bhutan to the Bengal Duars, ever becomes an
accomplished fact. Two thousand feet higher than most hill stations, and
yet below the really giddy heights, in a climate no hotter at any time
than an English summer, never parched with drought and never visited by
protracted spells of rain, not perched on an inconvenient hilltop away
from its water supply, but lying in a fertile valley, through which runs
a river of pure water that knows not the germ of enteric, with enough
flat spaces to hold commodious barracks and to provide good recreation
grounds, it seems that it would prove an altogether desirable haven for
the invalid soldiers from Calcutta and the Presidency district.

A week spent here was pleasant enough, enabling one, so to speak, to
recover one's breath after descending from those heights we had left
behind and before tackling those in front. I soon learnt, with the same
school-boy jubilation to which I have previously alluded, that I was to
accompany the advance.

Here, of course, at this rendezvous of troops many old friends ran
across one another. It was sometimes difficult for two friends to
recognise each other on account of the obstacles to recognition formed
by their respective beards. The soldier's