184. A Winter Journey amongst the Lutzu 
porters to carry it up to the village of Londre, whither we 
had descended from Doker-la in June; but owing toa mis- 
understanding nearly half of it was left behind, and he went 
off to the village, a good three hours’ walk, leaving it and 
us to our fate. Kin therefore stayed behind to look after 
the baggage and engage porters to carry it up, but it was 
ten o'clock at night before he arrived with everything, 
though in the meantime I had gone on to Londre and 
sent men back to his assistance. It was not an auspicious 
beginning for I had no lunch and only milk for supper on 
account of this business. Also, we were no sooner across 
the Mekong and south of Yang-tsa than it began to rain, 
and at this season rain in the valley meant snow on the 
mountains. 
Next morning our soldier, who seemed very much afraid 
of the Tibetans, wasted four hours finding four porters 
willing to cross the pass which, though only 13,000 feet, 
was already under deep snow; more we could not get, so 
something had to be sacrificed and | let the tents and Kin’s 
bedding go, telling the soldier to stay behind and look after 
them, and follow us as soon as he could, with two more 
porters. To delay any longer ourselves might have been 
fatal to the enterprise, and we had already wasted the 
morning, to say nothing of the previous afternoon. 
As a matter of fact our soldier never came and we 
accomplished the journey without an interpreter and without 
tents. He told Kin afterwards that he did not mind the 
beating, but was afraid of the snow and of mountain robbers; 
he had therefore taken the loads we had left behind straight 
down to Tsu-kou without troubling himself about our 
plight, and consequently he did not get the handsome bribe 
I had offered him. 
It was two o'clock before we started for the pass, 
camping well up in the forest at nightfall; Kin, who luckily 
had plenty of thick clothes with him, borrowing enough of 
my bedding to leave me rather cold without making himself 
much warmer. And cold it certainly was now, though 
camp was pitched below 10,000 feet. It was raw too, 
for the drizzle of rain which had set in towards dusk later 
turned to snow, and everything was so wet that it was 
impossible to keep up a good fire. 
