The Tents Were Ready Pitched In A Grassy
Hollow By The River; Horses, Cows, And Goats Were Grazing Near Them,
And A Number Of Men Were Preparing Food.
A Tibetan approached me,
accompanied by a creature in a nondescript dress speaking Hindustani
volubly.
On a band across his breast were the British crown, and a
plate with the words 'Commissioner's chaprassie, Kulu district.' I
never felt so extinguished. Liberty seemed lost, and the romance of
the desert to have died out in one moment! At the camping-ground I
found rows of salaaming Lahulis drawn up, and Hassan Khan in a state
which was a compound of pomposity and jubilant excitement. The
tahsildar (really the Tibetan honorary magistrate), he said, had
received instructions from the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab that
I was on the way to Kylang, and was to 'want for nothing.' So
twenty-four men, nine horses, a flock of goats, and two cows had been
waiting for me for three days in the Serchu valley. I wrote a polite
note to the magistrate, and sent all back except the chaprassie, the
cows, and the cowherd, my servants looking much crestfallen.
We crossed the Baralacha Pass in wind and snow showers into a climate
in which moisture began to be obvious. At short distances along the
pass, which extends for many miles, there are rude semicircular
walls, three feet high, all turned in one direction, in the shelter
of which travellers crouch to escape from the strong cutting wind.
My men suffered far more than on the two higher passes, and it was
difficult to dislodge them from these shelters, where they lay
groaning, gasping, and suffering from vertigo and nose-bleeding.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 91 of 101
Words from 24639 to 24925
of 27584
