roughly carved steps, and shoved, with help from above and below, on to a
flat mud roof. Here a tent had been pitched, the floor of which was
covered with mats and rugs for me to rest on. I no sooner laid myself
down than a string of men, women and children arrived, carrying bowls
with a particularly sumptuous meal of rice, _dhal_, meat, _balab_ (or
boiled buckwheat leaves), curd, milk, broiled corn with sugar,
_chapatis_, _shale_, sweets, native wine and liquor.

During the meal, tea was served in all sorts of fashions. There was
Chinese tea and Indian tea, tea boiled with sugar and tea without it, tea
with milk, and tea with butter and salt in it, pale tea and dark tea,
sweet tea and bitter tea--in fact, tea until I--devoted as I am to
it--wished that no tea-leaf had ever been picked and stewed in boiling
water.

CHAPTER XX

Dr. Wilson joins my expedition for a few marches--What misdeeds a
photographic camera can do--Weighing, dividing, and packing
provisions--Two extra men wanted--The last friendly faces.

I WAS examining a young woman who had badly injured and partly fractured
a central vertebra of the spine, when Dr. Wilson turned up and gave the
poor wretch the little relief possible in her condition, for which she
had hoped in vain from me. He was welcome to me for many reasons besides
the pleasure of being in his company. He had offered to join my
expedition for a few marches into Tibet, and I was glad indeed to have
him with me. We pushed on as soon as possible over the road between Nabi
and Kuti, which I have already described. Our journey was quite
uneventful, and the snow-bridges and snow-fields, so troublesome when I
had first taken this road, had melted and altogether disappeared. Even at
Nabi little happened. But I must just mention the following incident as
illustrative of the curious suspicion and dislike I found everywhere of
the photographic apparatus I carried with me.

I was on the point of leaving the place when a handsome Tibetan woman,
whom I had not previously noticed, accosted me with hysterical
sobs--inarticulate, but conveying a very clear impression of suffering.

"You have killed my child, and now you will kill my husband," she
complained, when she was able to talk; and I then discovered that I had
on my previous visit to Nabi taken a snap-shot at a child perched on the
top of a very heavy load that happened to be carried on the woman's back
through my camp, and