way which gave every one confidence, and all the men looked up to him and obeyed him implicitly. The more I see of men like him, the more convinced I am, that weak in many respects though such men as these Baltis are, yet if once they are given responsibility, shown trust, and left to work out their own salvation, they develop many latent qualities which probably neither they nor anybody else believed to be in them. Old Wali went back to Yarkand by Leh, and three years later, when I again visited Yarkand, he came to see me, looking precisely the saine, and dressed, I believe, in the very same clothes as when we had parted, and it was a real pleasure to see again a man who had done me such loyal service.
Another of the Baltis who had done excellent work was the slave whose release I had purchased at Yarkand. He was a wild-looking character, but the hardest-working man I have known. Now that he had regained his freedom, was being liberally paid, and was on his way home, he did not mind how much work he did, and all through the march from Yarkand he behaved splendidly. We passed by his native village one day as we were marching through Baltistan, and left him there. But on the following day he caught us up again, carrying an immense load of fruit and provision for a big dinner for the men. He had brought all this twelve miles, and he came and kissed my hands and feet, and said he could not allow us to go away without showing how grateful he felt. These Baltis are a warm-hearted people when once their deeper feelings can be reached, and when their hearts have not been crushed out of them by that fatal load-carrying, and I parted from my faithful followers with sincere regret.
A march or two after passing Skardu, the chief place in Baltistan, I met the first European on the south side of the Himalayas. He was not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, M. Dauvergne ; and in his tent I had the first good meal and talk in English I had had for many a month. A few marches
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