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0116 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / Page 116 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
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bodily upon them by pulling its head and tail. Often a poor
beast plunged its legs inextricably into the snow, whereupon
the men dug them out one by one, pulled them out by
hand, or even dragged them out with ropes. By sunset the
exhausted men and animals had all descended a thousand
feet more to a miserable camp at an elevation of 17,000
feet, where the snow was only a foot or two deep. No one
seemed to suffer from a temperature of minus two degrees
Fahrenheit the next morning, May 19. As we had plenty
of grain for the animals, and food for the men, every one
was ready for work. We all reached Durgukh in safety.
When the fifty or sixty coolies were paid off, Mr. Barrett
gave generous presents to those who had worked hard.
Thereupon it appeared that even the patient, cheerful
Ladakhi has socialistic tendencies, and appeals to mob
violence on occasions. When those who had received only
the regular wages found that their complaints were in vain,
they combined to take away the extra money from the
more fortunate ones by force, and after a wordy fight with
some blows, divided it equally among all.

The fords of the Shyok River, to which we had been
looking forward with such anxiety, proved much easier
than Chang La. We spent the eight days from May 22 to
May 29 in traveling northward up the steep-sided, broad-
bottomed glacial valley, crossing the river twenty-seven
times, and once making our horses wade half a mile in the
stream, all without the least difficulty. The reason for the
half mile in the river was that just before turning up a trib-
utary canyon to the Depsang plain, we found the whole val-
ley bottom covered with a sheet of ice. As its bed became