ighting
interfered with it. The Gyantse plain is very rich, with villages dotted
about at close intervals, all standing among rich crops and nominally
containing plenteous stores of what were our staple needs. But the art
of hiding such stores is possessed in a high degree by the Tibetan. Some
officers, who later on had much practice in foraging, became experts in
finding the hidden store-rooms, knowing at a glance at what point on a
given wall in an upper chamber the wall painting ceased to be of a
permanent nature, and was merely a temporary daub concealing the rough
cement and pile of loose unbaked bricks which blocked the doorway of
what, after use of crowbar and mallet, proved a veritable mine of grain
or barley flour.

Of course, while at Gyantse, the towns and lamasarais of Gyantse and
Tsechin were our happiest hunting-grounds. In one lofty room alone we
one day found eight thousand maunds of barley flour, all neatly bagged
and sealed with a Tibetan official seal, doubtless a mobilisation
reserve of the Tibetan army, and, alongside of it, another similar room
filled with loose grain to a height which we could never really explore,
since the weight of the grain made it impossible to open the door more
than an inch or so, from which small aperture our requirements trickled
out by the mule load. If we had had enough transport to carry on from
Gyantse all the supplies which we found there, our commissariat problems
would have been easy.

As we foraged on the days following these fights our way was strewn with
corpses. The warriors from the Kham country, who formed a large part of
the Tibetan army, were glorious in death, long-haired giants, lying as
they fell with their crude weapons lying beside them, and usually with a
peaceful, patient look in their faces. As types of physical humanity
they could not be easily excelled. I remember one day one of the Kham
men, a prisoner, was helping me to set in order a refractory watermill
stone with which I was trying to grind wheat into flour. My commanding
officer came to see how I was getting on and caught sight of the
prisoner. He gazed at him in admiration and then exclaimed:

'By Jove! what a fine corpse he would make!'

Very brutal of him I thought it was till I had seen more corpses, and
then I realised the true artistic insight of the remark.

I suppose it would be no more possible for an ordinary person to do
justice to Gyantse as a sightseer than for any one who