als of a transport
officer, and of his faithful servants, the transport driver and the
pack-mule.

I remember, during one such check, being seated on my pony at a point of
the road where it was impossible to dismount for lack of space, with one
mule's head buried in my pony's tail and another mule's tail flicking my
pony's nose, the rain trickling off my helmet and down my neck, and,
worst of all, a strong aroma rising from the khud beneath where lay the
remains of a mule who had met his death at that spot at a date that was
palpably neither very recent nor yet innocuously remote. To be bound
almost literally hand and foot in the vicinity of a bad smell is a form
of torture which in its way gives points to any inquisition.

Dhota lies at a considerable height above Lingmatam, and, before we
reached camp, many of the mule drivers were somewhat exhausted with
their climb. There was a certain amount of almost inevitable straggling
on the part of some of them--a most unfortunate occurrence, for it
resulted in a few leaving their mules to their own devices just when the
control of the latter was most necessary. For after emerging from the
pine forest a few miles below Dhota we came on to a hillside on which
grew ever so little of the deadly aconite plant. A check would occur
somewhere to the column. Those mules who were left standing without
their drivers would--as is the nature of the beast--try to improve the
shining hour by picking up a little grazing from the roadside. Here and
there a mule would swallow some aconite, and the chances were that
before he reached camp he would foam at the mouth and quickly expire. A
few, though poisoned, reached camp alive, and of these a small
proportion were saved by drastic remedies. But the deaths that day from
aconite poisoning almost reached double figures--a regrettable
occurrence, for the mule is an animal for whom, when one knows him, one
entertains affection, and, besides this, each mule carries two maunds of
useful provisions on his back, and we were not too well off for
transport. After another wet night on another wet camping ground, we
marched into Phari. We had left the green valley of the Chumbi; we had
mounted upwards through the pine forests beyond; we had emerged into a
region of rugged scenery where great rocky precipices hung over us. We
wondered what still wilder regions we were now approaching as we still
climbed higher. But all of a sudden, as it seemed, we had rea