54 
NARRATIVE. 
starting from Le our own party numbered about 
sixty individuals, and we had 130 pack-horses. The 
Yarkand envoy and his party added considerably to 
the size of the cavalcade. 
We had as yet heard no news of Tara Singh- and 
his companions, who had gone on before us from 
Srinagar, but the season was too far advanced to 
allow of our waiting for their return with informa- 
tion regarding the state of affairs in Yarkand ; so, 
having completed our arrangements on the 6th July, 
we resolved to start the next day. 
The conversation carried on of an evening round 
the camp fires was a wonderful mixture of tongues : 
English, Hindustani, Bengali, Kashmiri, Persian, 
Turki, and Thibetan. We talked Hindustani to our 
followers and Persian to the Yarkandis, who, amongst 
themselves, talked Turki. By means of an inter- 
preter who spoke Hindustani and Tibetan we com- 
municated with our porters. Some of the men were 
from Calcutta and talked Bengali to each other, and 
our Kashmiri followers talked Kashmiri, which is 
said to be a mixture of all the languages of Asia. 
On July 7th we made a short march of ten miles 
to Tikshe, a small village on the banks of the Indus, 
and we now ascertained what we before had suspected, 
namely, that the pack-horses supplied by the Wazir, 
the highest official in Ladak, were quite unequal to 
the work before them. Fortunately we had taken a 
good many spare ponies, to allow of the worst being 
weeded out ; but, had there been time to replace 
them, we would have rejected the whole lot. We 
had obtained the horses through the Wazir, and as 
we agreed to pay the same rates as traders do, we had 
