Camp New Chumbi, Tibet, 17th March Wrapped up in our furs and shivering in our mess tent o'evenings we can see the ungrateful public trampling with lanterns through the snow to enquire whether the post has come in. It has been snowing here day after day, the Jelap is white and ing, it i convoy has we have grown accustomed to the post overcoming all the physical difficulties..of the great Himalayan barrier and of the weather. The people of these parts have: not shown the slightest resentment at our presence; and. are making most of the. opportunity.: for growing rich by selling supplies.
But nature is aroused and angry." South of the Jelap the most violent thunderstorms. rage. Lightning has destroyed. the store-depot at. At Giatong men have een struck down and killed. Oni this side of the Passes the heavens have bean clouding over every afternoon. Then follows heavy blinding snow. It clears up in the still hours of the night, and we know by our foot, frozen beneath our furs and bedding that cold of a kind not to, be described has des-ended on the Valley.
Through it all, through the thunder and the lightning, over the perilous Jelap. through the snow, and in the bitter, bitter cold the postal runners come. They run night and day. For them the Jelap is never closed. The gorge above Gante, where. the snow has drifted thirty fect deep and more, has to be passed in the dark. We hear those hand men jingle into camp at dead of night and shiver and wonder in our beds., point exptoting letters from loved ones at homo when they are informed that the post. is m: t yot in, but i is as well to remember, as 1 Gndicated before, that we are in Tibet and not in a settled cantonment. So far as. the superior officers are concern ied. they. bestow. on their work a degree of very round We have grown so accustomed to the fact that Phati-jong, under the mighty shadow of Chumalbari, that remote and half-mystical mountain, is in telegraphic communication with India that we have ceased to wonder.
insce yh as if it" were
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.