and much-needed rest. Under its influence and that of the sea air the last of the wounds on my right foot, which had still given me trouble at Calcutta, finally healed just before I set foot for a brief halt in the city of Marco Polo. Thus by the time I reached London, after the middle of January, I was able to walk without pain and to feel quite sure of the day when I might climb again on the mountains. But it was to me an equally great satisfaction that all my cases with antiques, close on a hundred in number, had just then safely arrived there.
The return from a long journey like mine could not, I well knew, mean rest, but only the prelude to labours in some respects more important, and to me certainly more arduous, than the work in the field. The scientific results achieved by my expedition would for the greatest and most valuable part have been thrown away if all the exact observations bearing on the physical conditions, past and present, of the wide regions traversed ; on the ruins unearthed and surveyed ; on the antiquities and manuscript remains which had been brought to light by thousands, were not to be carefully recorded by myself and thus made available for further researches.
It may give some idea of the tasks awaiting me if I mention that our topographical surveys, now in course of detailed publication by the Indian Trigonometrical Survey, on the scale of four miles to the inch, fill ninety-four map-sheets of the standard size, every one needing my repeated careful revision in proof, and that the mere unpacking and first arrangement of the thousands of archaeological objects in basement rooms of the British Museum, which were made available for what seemed like a temporary immurement, took close on six months. The decipherment and publication of the manuscripts and documents, probably over 14,000 in number and in about ' a dozen scripts and languages, are bound for a long number of years to claim the learned labours of quite a staff of Orientalist savants. To select them and to organize their efforts, and those of the many expert collaborators needed in other directions, was by itself a heavy and responsible task. Nor could their labours be started in earnest until all facts bearing
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