on group on the wall of a Kashmiri
shop was especially fine. Strangest of all to find was a bicycle of the
Rover pattern--quite out of gear, but doubtless interesting to the
Tibetan as a Western curio. He may have thought it was a species of
Christian prayer-wheel.

I was short of dinner plates, and bought one. It was of tin, and had
stamped on it a comprehensive lesson in both political and physical
geography. All round the rim faces of clocks were stamped. Each face was
encircled with a scroll containing the name and the number of the
population of some large city of the world, while the clock in the
centre showed what the time was in that city when the clock in London
stood at twelve noon. The population of London as stamped on the plate
stood at quite a low figure, but London was selected as the honoured
city whose clock should stand at the precise hour of noon, and the whole
geography lesson was in English. One would therefore come to the
conclusion that the plate was a British product, dating back to the
period of some not very recent census. To have traced that plate from
Birmingham to Lhassa would have been interesting.

Beggars swarmed in the bazaar. One man earned an obviously ample
livelihood by carrying his grandfather on his back through the streets.
The grandfather was certainly the quintessence of decrepitude, and as
such would appeal to the benevolent, who apparently never thought of
suggesting to the young man that it would be better to leave grandfather
at home in bed, and go out unencumbered to earn an honest living.
Malefactors in chains are also seen crawling about, a peripatetic prison
being apparently less felt by the Lhassa exchequer than one of bricks
and mortar.

CHAPTER XXI

ENOUGH OF LHASSA: A TRIP DOWN COUNTRY: LIFE IN A POST: TRUE HOSPITALITY:
A BHUTYA PONY

Since I reached India, I have been told that every moment I spent in the
romantic environs of Lhassa must have been intensely interesting, and
that to have been to Lhassa is the envy of the world. I suppose, like
the brute one is, one got _blase_ and indifferent to one's good fortune,
but it is certain that those 'crowded hours of glorious life' began to
pall. We did the best we could to while away the time. An energetic race
committee provided gymkhanas and a 'sky meeting' (just, says the
intelligent foreigner, what a British army _would_ indulge in, on
arrival at such a place). A football tournament followed. Football at