The Wonderful Mekong 143 
the Workmen’s Compensation Act, for my soldier with 
true oriental despotism had warned the people in one 
village that if they did not do what I told them they would 
be beaten! They are great swashbucklers, these Tibetan 
soldiers, thriving on reflected glory; and though my guide 
was only anxious to please me, he was evidently a man of 
both rank and authority, for every villager cringed before 
him. As long as the people are quiet, such a reputation 
as he had given me does no harm, but should they be 
restless, it might easily occur to them that after all I was 
alone. In the present instance therefore I tempered justice 
with mercy and hard cash. 
At nightfall we climbed the high spur guarding 
the valley mouth and found ourselves on a narrow path 
with a fearful chasm below us, where a long ribbon 
of water caught the last dying light, which gleamed 
irregularly on swirling current and racing eddy, while there 
floated up to us out of the darkness the hollow booming of 
the restless river. It was the Mekong thundering south- 
wards through the gorges. I have already said that the 
Mekong is the smallest of the three rivers, having neither 
the tremendous current of the Salween nor the great 
breadth of the Yang-tze. Yet when I heard it at night 
pouring forth from that deep wound in the Tibetan moun- 
tains I thought it the grandest river of them all. 
The path down the river, though well made, was 
narrow, and in the gloom the precipices on the one hand, 
and towering screes stretching up and up out of sight on the 
other, made riding uncomfortable, so I walked. There was 
some doubt as to whether we should be able to reach 
Samba-dhuka, our destination on the Mekong, at all, since 
the crossing of a big torrent in the semi-darkness was no 
easy matter. However we presently came upon the stream 
and crossed in safety, the men wading through waist deep 
and the ponies struggling across with the water almost up 
to their girths. About nine o'clock we suddenly came 
upon Samba-dhuka which, as I found next day, consisted 
of some twenty or thirty wooden huts, hidden in a mountain 
alcove, on a boulder-strewn alluvial fan with broad terraces 
of buckwheat. Everything was very still, but the men 
approached giving the Tibetan call, and in a twinkling dogs 
