of grass that fringes the forest. Some
Government officer must have planted them years ago, and left them to
fight it out with Nature and the caretaker.

The forest has encroached, and it is hard to say where Nature's hand or
Art's begins and ends. Beside a rose-bush there has sprung up the solid
pink club of the wild ginger, and from a bed of amaryllis a giant arum
raises itself four feet in its dappled, snake-like sheath. Gardens have
most charm in spots like this, where their mingled trimness and neglect
contrast with the insolent unconcern of an encroaching forest.

At Ari I am fifty miles from Darjeeling, on the road to Lhasa.

On June 21 I set my face to Lhasa for the second time. I took another
route to Chumbi, via Kalimpong and Pedong in British Bhutan. The road is
no further, but it compasses some arduous ascents. On the other hand it
avoids the low, malarious valleys of Sikkim, where the path is
constantly carried away by slips. There is less chance of a block, and
one is above the cholera zone. The Jelap route, which I strike
to-morrow, is closed, owing to cholera and land-slips, so that I shall
not touch the line of communications until within a few miles of Chumbi,
in which time my wound will have had a week longer to heal before I risk
a medical examination and the chance of being sent back. The relief
column is due at Gyantse in a few days; it depends on the length of the
operations there whether I catch the advance to Lhasa.

Through avoiding the Nathu-la route to Chumbi I had to arrange my own
transport. In Darjeeling my coolies bolted without putting a pack on
their backs. More were secured; these disappeared in the night at
Kalimpong without waiting to be paid. Pack-ponies were hired to replace
them, but these are now in a state of collapse. Arguing, and haggling,
and hectoring, and blarneying, and persuading are wearisome at all
times, but more especially in these close steamy valleys, where it is
too much trouble to lift an eyelid, and the air induces an almost
immoral state of lassitude, in which one is tempted to dole out silver
indifferently to anyone who has it in his power to oil the wheels of
life. I could fill a whole chapter with a jeremiad on transport, but it
is enough to indicate, to those who go about in vehicles, that there are
men on the road to Tibet now who would beggar themselves and their
families for generations for a macadamized highway and two hansom cabs
to carry them and th