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sahib. It is also true that many among them are quite athletic and carry heavy loads over great distances. What I disliked, however, was the injustice done to the female population of a little village when a large caravan like ours demanded the service of practically all the women between twelve and fifty years of age. Then the claims of their babies were left quite out of consideration, and the poor mothers had to see what arrangements they could make with regard to their offspring for a full day or so. Our box which contained the photographic plates was the heaviest of all, and it was always the last taken up. The first corners took hold of the lighter loads and darted off as soon as possible. When we were at Chogan on our way to Urni, this box with the plates did not arrive, and Pindi Lal volunteered to stay behind and wait for it. He caught me up at Urni when it was quite dark. The heavy box had fallen to the lot of a child of fourteen. years of age who was absolutely unequal to the task. This girl, therefore, asked three of her friends to assist her in the hard work she had to perform, and so Pindi Lal received the box out of the hands of four girls ` all very young and very beautiful ' as he said. They were, of course, all of high caste, and the way they took leave of the Babu and wished him a good journey was quite charming. The system of the Tibetans is quite different from that of the Bashahr State. In Tibet the men come first, and they are ready to do the hardest work themselves. The women who offer to do cooly work are such as can be spared from their homes.
I hope that the chivalrous chief of the Bashahr State will undertake to teach his male subjects a little more chivalry.
The bridge of Wangtu is evidently in a place where there has been a bridge from time immemorial, as is made probable by ancient carvings on the rocks. One of them shows a man with a sword in his left hand, and a club in his right. In the rocks there are many caves used by travellers, and on the rocks about them I saw many Tibetan
inscriptions in charcoal and red chalk, one of them reading : Sa-kya pa-mkh yen -no, " Take notice of this (or ` of me ') 0 Sakya-man ! " In one of the caves, there were many tablets of burnt clay, just like those which are made of clay and the ashes of the dead. They have generally the figure of a Buddhist saint printed on them and are deposited in mchod-rten or caves. Here, however, they were quite plain. A dead lama was probably cremated here in ancient times, and a mould not being at hand, the clay-tablets were formed without it.
Sunday, the 27th June, was spent at Urni. In the afternoon I went to see the mandir8 or temples. The ` old temple ' is of the square tower type, like so many of Kuhl, and has a wooden verandah running round below the slanting gable roof. It was almost without any carvings, and people said that the dévata had left the place. The ` new temple,' not far from the old one, was thoroughly renovated, as people say, about twenty years ago. There are many wood-carvings dating from that time, for instance hunting-scenes : a man shooting a leopard with a rifle. They were all very primitive. There was also a carving of a cock, and what I took for a hen with chickens, eating a snake. But people said it was a peacock. (Garuda devouring Nágas ?). The villagers showed
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