Pass. Hearing of my return to these parts, he had come to offer his services, and I gladly accepted them, for a more willing, cheery servant I never had. From pony-man he was now promoted to cook. He had no experience of cooking, and these rough hill-men are not the persons one would ordinarily choose for cooks ; but, knowing the hardships my men would have to go through, I was determined not to have a man from the plains of India, who might become ill or give in just when his services were most needed. Only men accustomed to " roughing" it could come with me now, and no one could stand hard work better than Shukar Ali. So, although I could not look forward to any very recherché dinners while he was at the head of the cooking department, I knew that I should always be sure of a dinner of some sort, and with Shukar Ali as one of the party there would always be a volunteer for hard work when anything specially trying had to be done.
At Leh I was the guest of Captain Ramsay, the British Joint Commissioner, and the same officer whom I mentioned as being Political Agent at Srinagar when I arrived there from Peking.* He had been asked to have ponies ready for me, and to have other necessary arrangements made for my onward journey, and he had done everything so thoroughly that I had little else to do but take over charge. A matter which gave us, however, considerable anxiety was in regard to an additional escort of twenty-five Kashmir Sepoys, who were to be taken on as far as Shahidula. The garrison of Leh was paraded, but it only numbered seventy-nine all told, and was composed of miserable, decrepit old men, thin and half-starved, who looked at me imploringly as I went down the ranks—each one seeming to beseech me not to take him with me, while a look of horror came over each one that I selected. It is impossible to conceive a greater difference than there was between the look and the spirit of the Gurkhas
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