put up to Tuna till March, so a heliograph on the summit
of the Tang la was in daily use.
Meanwhile, the General took up his quarters at
Chumbi, in a not uncomfortable house at Bakcham,
about three-quarters of a mile from the encampment at
New Chumbi. The Coolie Corps, which Mr. White had
undertaken to organise, was in working order by the
middle of January, and under the able superintendence
of Captain Souter contributed greatly to the accumulations
of stores, which were steadily passing over the
Jelep route, and creating tarpaulin-covered hillocks at
Chumbi. The choice of the Natu la was accepted
by Mr. White after the alternative road over the
Yak la* had been tried. The Yak la is the shortest
road between Chumbi and Gangtok, to which place
a good cart-road runs from Siliguri in the plains of India,
but to the best of my|belief only one party ever crossed
it. It was my fortune to be one of them. Bad as all
these passes are, the eastern descent of the Yak la is
beyond comparison the worst— a mere semi-perpendicular
scramble four miles deep, down which one could only
go by jumping from one boulder to another; many of
these were coated with ice, and some crashed down the
khud upon the lightest pressure. I do not think I
have ever been so cold in my life as when I was helping
Mr. White to put up a valuable self-registering thermometer
upon the extreme summit of the Yak la. I do not
remember what the temperature exactly was ; I remember
that when we took it out of the box it was 40
below freezing point, but in the five minutes which it
took us to set up strongly the pole to which it was to be
* The yak pass— pronounced Y a la. The Jelep is the “ beautiful flat pass and is
spelled “ rges-lep-la.”
attached, it had fallen over 30° ; there was a wind like
a knife edge the whole time, against which thick clothing
and poshteens were as gauze. To illustrate the difficulty
and hardship of that crossing, it is, I think, only necessary
to say that that thermometer still stands at the summit
of the pass ; no one- has ever summoned up enough
courage to go and take it away. The idea of using
the Yak la was abandoned, and the lines of supply were
thenceforward the Jelep and the Natu la. Over these
no burdened beast can pass. Only on the backs of
coolies could the precious stores be carried across, slowly
and painfully. It was a tremendous task, and it was
difficult to believe that day after day, week after week,
month after month, obstacles so appalling could be
overcome by the small men of Sikkim who composed
the corps.
Still, forty thousand pounds weight of stores was
daily delivered in Chumbi, and Major Bretherton and
Captain Souter are alike to be congratulated indeed
upon so brilliant an achievement. The road from India
that these stores had travelled is worth a chapter to
itself. Beyond all question the track that leads from
Siliguri through Sikkim to Phari is the most wonderful
and beautiful on earth.