132 Tibet and Turkestan
sometimes chairs. Your servants care for you as best they can, and you put down in a book found in the bungalow an entry of the rupee which you have paid the native attendant, and which goes to the up-keep fund. The whole caravan route is well kept. There is a British Commissioner, assisted by a native, to look after it.
Mohammed Joo and Osman, faithful, humble, uncomplaining, these two would go back to Yarkand, and they must hasten over Kardung, Sasar, and the Karakoram, that the snows of coming winter might not fatally entrap them, or imprison them idly in Ladak. Grateful for the backsheesh which their courage had so generously earned, they left us, and out of our sight faded two who shall live in our hearts, eminent citizens of that republic of the affections into which the memory of the traveller introduces men of every colour, every tongue, every creed.
Now we are off again, clattering through the Himalayas, two stages in each day, changing ponies at every post. For two or three days we are still in the country of the Tibet people : long, black, and dirty cues, three-cornered hats, rusty lama-gowns, fluttering prayers, graven stones, rude shrines in high places, eyrie monasteries, the scant, laborious fields rock-anchored on the steep hillside, huddled villages, the sinuous and sparkling Indus, the unattainable heights of snow crowning the barren slopes —such was the ever-changing, ever-recurring vision which fleeting day disclosed, while night was for deep sleep. Then at a turn of the trail we were again, and for the last time, suddenly ushered into
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