respect. Wheeled vehicles would demand a vast expènditure—probably an impossible sum—for so poor a country as Tibet, having such long lines, such rough conditions. Until the wagon road is justified, pack-trails remain everywhere just good enough to permit passage, and are an abiding marvel to European travellers.
Several continuous tracks may be followed from Lhasa to China ; the route followed by the English expedition from Darjeeling is the shortest line connecting Lhasa with the civilised world ; a long, difficult line leads to the far west of Tibet and to Ladak, now belonging to Kashmir; branching to the south from this east-and-west trail are several possible routes leading into Nepal. To the north there are no recognised lines save well to the east, going up to the Kokonor region, and, farther west, a pilgrim route for Mongolians coming to their Holy City. The main streams of commerce flow to and fro 'twixt China and Tibet.
The burly yak demands as little in the way of footing and of food as any self-respecting beast could ask, yet even he must pant and strain and die in the hard scramble over glacier and stone that mark the long leagues to China. Slower than the horse, the yak is also surer-footed and less easily frozen to death. He makes up into an irregular jumbled caravan, never learning the strict discipline of single-file march, which ponies are taught to prefer, and which camels seem to have learned in an earlier incarnation. It is this impassive, dignified brute, the camel, who has so powerfully affected the imaginations and thus falsified the calculations
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