A SUMMER IN HIGH ASIA. 



end in view. The road into Thibet should be opened to 

 native traders of India, and they should be allowed to 

 compete on equal terms with all comers along a highway 

 free and open to all. In the opinion of men qualified to 

 judge, our trans-Himalayan trade would then rapidly 

 assume proportions which would attract more general 

 attention than it receives at present, and would develop a 

 most useful and profitable market for both Great Britain 

 and India. 



The suggestion to increase the expenditure on the 

 Ladakh office seems to be a question which should be 

 discussed and decided on its merits, with a view to ascer- 

 taining whether or no any public benefit, or the reverse, 

 might accrue if the proposal were to meet with approval. 

 Perhaps the best means of explaining this will be, while 

 abstaining from personal opinion, to make a plain state- 

 ment of fact of what occurred in Ladakh in 1894, and 

 the measures taken to meet the emergency, and then con- 

 trast the results obtained with what would have happened 

 had those measures not been taken. 



On or about July 5th, while awaiting the orders of the 

 Government of India, at Gulmarg, on certain proposals 

 contained in the Ladakh Trade Report of 1893-94, I 

 received a telegram that postal and all other communi- 

 cations from Leh and Central Asia had been completely 

 cut off by the destruction of the Kargil bridge. The 

 telegraph line is only laid as far as Kargil on the Leh 

 road, so that nothing could be ascertained of what had 

 happened beyond Kargil. 



The Ladakh diary will show that on July 6th I left 

 Gulmarg, and, proceeding by double marches, reached 

 Kargil on the loth. On arrival there I found that not 

 only were no traces of the Kargil bridge, except the 

 remnants of the two end piers, left, but every bridge on 

 the Sooroo had been destroyed by the floods, and there 

 was absolutely no means of communicating with the right 



266 



