284 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



formed us that no other Englishmen had ever been 

 there before, and that, had their men, whose duty it 

 was, been properly on the look-out, we ought never 

 to have been permitted to come so far. These officials 

 were quite reasonable and sensible men, and hoped 

 we would not fight, for they said that war between 

 the English and Tibetans would result in consequence. 



It was a very cold and raw day we spent in this 

 Kerambutabuk nullah, and most of the time, too, sleet 

 was falling. The only noise we heard, besides an 

 occasional sudden blast, was the firing off of the 

 Tibetan matchlocks farther up the valley and the 

 tinkling bells on the ponies of fresh arrivals as they 

 trotted past a few hundred yards from our tents. There 

 had been so much ringing all day long that, by the 

 end of the day, quite a small army had been amassed. 



We told our friends that we wished to go into 

 Turkestan, but the upshot of all our war meetings 

 ended in our having to retire by the same way we 

 had come, namely, over the Napu La, thence northwards 

 to the frontier pass called Lanak La. They agreed 

 to give us four men to show us the way as far as 

 Lanak La, but did not see the force of giving us any 

 help with our transport." 



Captain H. H. P. Deasy spent some three years 

 exploring Tibet and Chinese Turkestan. 1 He had many 

 adventures, two of which are reproduced from the record 

 of his travels : " One very annoying episode of the 

 journey was the straying of many of the animals from 

 the vicinity of Camp 31, involving the loss of another 

 day whilst most of the men went in search of the 

 missing steeds. By the next morning the eleven best 

 1 See Bibliography, 50. 



