eyond Kalatso. As our men had orders not to fire or
provoke an attack, they sent a messenger up to the walls to ask one of
the Tibetans to come out and parley. They said they would send for a
man, and invited us to come nearer. When we had ridden up to within a
hundred yards of the village, they opened a heavy fire on us with their
matchlocks. Our scouts spread out, rode back a few hundred yards, and
took cover behind stones. Not a man or pony was hit. Before retiring,
the mounted infantry fired a few volleys at the Tibetans who were lining
the roofs of two large houses and a wall that connected them, their
heads only appearing above the low turf parapets. Twice the Tibetans
sent off a mounted man for reinforcements, but our shooting was so good
that each time the horse returned riderless. The next morning we found
the village unoccupied, and discovered six dead left on the roofs, most
of whom were wounded about the chest. Our bullets had penetrated the two
feet of turf and killed the man behind. Putting aside the question of
Guru, the Samando affair was the first overt act of hostility directed
against the mission.

After Samando there was no longer any doubt that the Tibetans intended
to oppose our advance. On the 8th the mounted infantry discovered a wall
built across the valley and up the hills just this side of Kangma, which
they reported as occupied by about 1,000 men. As it was too late to
attack that night, we formed camp. The next morning we found the wall
evacuated, and the villagers reported that the Tibetans had retired to
the gorge below. This habit of building formidable barriers across a
valley, stretching from crest to crest of the flanking hills, is a
well-known trait of Tibetan warfare. The wall is often built in the
night and abandoned the next morning. One would imagine that, after
toiling all night to make a strong position, the Tibetans would hold
their wall if they intended to make a stand anywhere. But they do not
grudge the labour. Wall-building is an instinct with them. When a
Tibetan sees two stones by the roadside, he cannot resist placing one on
the top of the other. So wherever one goes the whole countryside is
studded with these monuments of wasted labour, erected to propitiate the
genii of the place, or from mere force of habit to while away an idle
hour. During the campaign of 1888 it was this practice of strengthening
and abandoning positions more than anything else which gained the
Tib