e me. This incident did
not stop our headlong career, and we continued on until we
arrived at Galshio about sunset. This was the 21st August last.
At this place there is a large monastery on the crown of a low
hill. At some distance from the base of the hill, and on the
plain, was pitched the large white tent of the _Pombo_. Our
cavalcade drew up there. I was then roughly torn out of my saddle
by two or three men. I requested to stop for one moment. My
captors refused me this and, roughly thrusting me forward, said
that, as I was about to be beheaded in an instant, it was
unnecessary. I was hustled to the left front of the tent, where,
on the ground, lay a log of wood in the shape of a prism. Upon
the sharp edge of it I was made to stand. I was held by the body
by several persons, while others pulled my legs as wide apart as
they could be stretched. Then my feet were very securely tied by
cords of yak-hair. The cords were so tight that they cut into the
flesh in numerous places, some of the cuts or wounds being about
three inches long. When I was thus secured one ruffian (Nerba),
whom I have alluded to above, came forward and seized me by the
hair of my head. He pulled my hair as hard as he could. My hair
was long, as I had not had it cut since the day preceding my
departure from London about the middle of March. The others
formed up in front of me in a semicircle. Then the _Pombo_ arose
and was handed a bar of iron, which had been made red hot in a
brazier, the end grasped by the _Pombo_ being bound round with
red cloths. He strode up to me, urged on by the Lamas, and said
jeeringly that as I had gone to see the country, my punishment
would be to have my eyes burnt out. This was in allusion to what
I had said at Toxem, viz.--that I was a traveller and merely
wished to see the country. He then placed the red-hot bar of iron
parallel to and about an inch and a half or two inches from my
eyeballs, and all but touching the nose. The heat was so intense
that it seemed as if my eyes were desiccated and my nose
scorched. There is still a mark of the burn on my nose. I was
forced to shut my eyes instinctively. He seemed to me to have
kept the bar of heated iron before my eyes for fully thirty
seconds or so. After some moments I opened my eyes and behe