uld lie in an ekka,
for this was flat country, and it had seemed worth while and eventually
proved a signal success to drag up from India several hundred of those
plainly built but strong little two-wheeled carts called ekkas, which
hold five maunds each, and can be used on almost any road, however
rough, provided it is wide enough to hold both wheels. These ekkas had
been run up behind their ponies as far as possible, then taken to
pieces, and carried in fragments on the backs of coolis over the passes
and up on to the Phari plain, where, at a height of 15,000 feet, they
were put together again and plied to and fro, at first greatly to the
astonishment of the resident Tibetan, who had never seen any wheels
other than prayer-wheels. Most of the ekkas were drawn by ponies of the
small 'country-bred' type brought from India, but the casualties among
these were sometimes replaced by draught yaks.

From Menza onwards our rice-bag had a choice of mounts. It might go on a
pack mule, or meander slowly along on the back of a pack yak, or, with
the other bag alongside it, entirely eclipse from human view the most
miniature of donkeys, who, nevertheless, if allowed ample time to look
about him, and to pick up weird grazing by the roadside, would
eventually arrive in camp none the worse, and with his load intact after
a uniform progress of about one mile an hour.

On one or other of these animals the rice-bag would eventually reach
Lhassa, or, if it foregathered with the Lhassa column on its way up, it
might be handed over to one of the coolis who accompanied that column.
It probably reached Lhassa intact, its waterproof bag having protected
it from all weathers; but it might also have got a small hole somewhere
among its ample coverings, and lost a pound or two on the way, or--for
such is human nature--arrive still weighing the original eighty pounds,
but containing a stone or two in the place where some few odd pounds of
rice ought to have been.

The manners and customs of our various transport animals would form an
interesting study in natural history. The yak, to the uninitiated
intruder, was of course the most striking. The mule we know, and the
donkey we know, and the cooli was more or less of the same species as
ourselves; but the yak was a novelty. The yak is a buffalo in
petticoats. This seems an incongruous combination, for the _a priori_
idea of a buffalo is of something fierce, and of petticoats, of
something not fi