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FIRST CONTACT WITH THE TIBETANS. 339
ev^en worse, it rained incessantly. In truth, a wretched
country ! Human beings fled from us, and even the very
elements conspired together against us ! How on earth will
Chernoff make his way with the feeble animals of the rear
caravan ?
Just under the pass we lost another camel, one of the best
in the caravan. He was unable to get in that night, and
next morning we found him stiff and frozen, half buried in
the mire. Perhaps you will now understand that it is
anything but a pastime or an exhilarating sport to travel
across Tibet. In fact, there were times when the prospect
looked so desperate and so gloomy that we should hardly
have rebelled had the earth opened and swallowed us all
up, and in that waj^ freed us from all our troubles.
At last ! At last ! we made our way down from those
terrible altitudes and reached yet another river. Where
it came from and where it went to we could not see, for the
blinding snow and the driving rain were conspiring together
to fill the glen with an impenetrable mist. It was, how-
ever, a relief to find that the bed of the river—for we
marched in the water—was strewn with gravel, and firm
enough to bear the weight of our animals. But we were
not only dead tired, we were wet to the skin, when we
formed Camp No. XLIII. on the right bank of this stream.
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