uld take these off
to sell to you and haggle, like the veritable Eastern traders that they
were, with you for the price.
Besides the Tibetan or Chinese candle, we also found imported candles of
European manufacture. But most imports for household use appeared to be
Japanese, as, for instance, soap and matches; neither of these were of
good quality, and Japan does not seem to take pains to appear at her
best in the Lhassa market. But to get a new cake of soap, even if it did
crumble away quickly, was a luxury, and the return to a land of matches
was a great relief. I remember an officer who on the march had latterly
possessed himself of a Tibetan flint and steel and learnt to light a
cigarette with them.
There are just about half a dozen prime necessities of no great bulk
which always seem to run out sooner than expected on field service. A
reserve in a supply column of the following would always come in useful:
of matches, three mule loads; of wax candles, seven mule loads; of soap,
ten mule loads; of some strong forbidding kind of tobacco that in times
of privation would go a very long way, ten mule loads; of chocolate
creams and barley sugar, thirty mule loads. Sixty such mules laid out
per brigade would be much blessed.
When relations with the Tibetans had become less strained, we used to go
in organised parties to visit the bazaar in Lhassa city itself. These
parties reminded one of a Sunday-school treat. The part of curate would
be played by some field-officer who would collect his school children
outside camp. These would consist of those officers, soldiers, sepoys,
and followers whose turn it was to go. He would conduct us with careful
supervision from the camp to the city, and there let us loose for two
hours to play in the bazaar. The bazaar was one circular street,
surrounding the cathedral which, though once or twice entered by
favoured individuals, was out of bounds for us.
In the city the same kinds of things were for sale as were brought to
the camp bazaar, but there was a larger variety of imported goods. How
some of those things ever got to Lhassa was a mystery. In one shop I saw
a whole row of small looking-glasses 'made in Austria,' and beside them
a score or so of penknives 'made in Germany.' The British tradesman's
pictorial almanac will, I suppose, be found hanging on the gates of the
new Jerusalem; it had certainly penetrated Lhassa, usually in the form
of a royal family group. One coronati
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