port Corps had to contend
with every description of disease and misfortune--anthrax, rinderpest,
foot and mouth disease, aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over
precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding. The worst
fatalities occurred on the Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments
with the transport were singularly unsuccessful. Out of two hundred
buffaloes employed at low elevations, only three survived, and the seven
camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri and Gantok all died
by way of protest. Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal
was practically exterminated. From four to five thousand were originally
purchased, of which more than a thousand died from anthrax before they
reached the frontier. All the drinking-water on the route was infected;
the Nepalese did not believe the disease was contagious, and took no
precautions. The disease spread almost universally among the cattle, and
at the worst time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts were massed on
the Nepal frontier. Segregation camps were formed, and ultimately, after
much patient care, the disease was stamped out.

Then began the historic march through Sikkim, which, as a protracted
struggle against natural calamities, might be compared to the retreat of
the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. Superstitious
natives might well think that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.
As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the reduced corps were
attacked by rinderpest, which carried off seventy. When the herds left
the Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the sudden change in
climate overwhelmed hundreds. No real yak survived the heat of the
Sikkim valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or halfbreeds
from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the cross from the bull and female
yaks. In Sikkim, which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle diseases,
the wretched survivors were infected with foot and mouth disease. The
epidemic is not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd,
fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude of climate, it carried
off scores. Then, to avoid spreading contagion, the yaks were driven
through trackless, unfrequented country, up and down precipitous
mountain-sides, and through dense forests. Again segregation camps were
formed, and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty at a time.
Every day there was a holocaust. Then followed the ascent into high
altit