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to move a large quantity of earth, and they went at it heartily like Englishmen. My Guddee servants [from India] used to notice how differently they worked from the Indian coolies' listless, idle way. What [three men] did in one day would have taken a dozen coolies to do in the same time. . . . They labored just as hard when their emiloyer, a shoemaker, . . . was out of the way, as when he was present, . . . as I myself noticed."
Turning now to the bad qualities of the Chantos, I have already referred to timidity and untruthfulness. In the latter respect they do not seem to be so bad as some other Orientals, for instance the Kashmiris and Persians. My men, thanks to the fine qualities of their half-breed Ladakhi chiefs, Rasul and Ibrahim, never cheated me at all, so far as I could detect. One annoying trait which the Chanto would probably class under courtesy rather than dishonesty, and which probably is really due to timidity, is the vexatious way in which the native always agrees with any one more powerful than himself, or gives the answer which he thinks the other expects. As Dunmore puts it : -
"If I were to say, `I suppose it 's always hazy and cloudy at Sanju ?' — the native would reply, `Always.' And if [my companion] half an hour afterwards were to say, ` I suppose it is very seldom you get such cloudy, hazy weather here,' the same native would reply, `Very seldom."'
Provincialism and childishness are not exactly bad qualities, but they do not add to a people's strength. Whenever we met a wild animal, I was struck with the childish way in which even old men would shout and wave their hands "to see it run." Lack of initiative and of curiosity are to be
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