A SUMMER IN HIGH ASIA. 



I volunteered myself in order to prevent that small 

 concession being refused to men who had done more 

 than their ordinary work and been put to heavy expense 

 when camped at fifteen miles away from the nearest village 

 on the barren bank of a river where wood and water 

 only were locally procurable. In the Nubra and beyond 

 I took no one I could do without, and so reduced office 

 expenses ; but the travelling allowance given, Rs. 1 10 per 

 mensem or Rs. 4 per diem roughly, did not cover cost of 

 transport alone, and could not have come well within 

 Rs. 100 per mensem of what was spent by me privately 

 in connection with my movements ? But it will not, I 

 think, be difficult to understand that I had little time for 

 private accounts. At Chalaskat a merchant's caravan of 

 stores had to be bought up to keep the camp going. 

 In the Nubra stores had to be sent out from Leh. 

 Nothing could have saved the communications in 1894 

 had not the year before a road been run under my 

 supervision along the right bank of the Shergol gorge. 

 Of the eight bridges by which the old road passed back- 

 wards and forwards in 1892 no traces of seven had been 

 left by the floods of 1894. That was the main work of 

 those years. After my return from Nubra in August of 

 that year, I had to make several tours to watch work 

 under construction. Without the superintendence of 

 some one with some slight knowledge of engineering, 

 this work could not possibly have been completed in 

 time. It is needless to say that more than the travelling 

 allowance of Rs. no per mensem had been spent long 

 before the Nubra was reached, apart from the cost of the 

 wear and tear of property involved by long and rapid 

 moves over a broken line of communications. The 

 distance from Srinagar to Leh being 250 miles, from Leh 

 to the Sasser no, I had to travel over 700 miles, 

 exclusive of occasional flying visits of thirty to fifty miles 

 a day. 



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