now the river made a weir of it, pouring over it in a dirty,
clouded stream, and you might hear the roar of it at
the ferry half a mile up the river. At the shore end
the abutments and anchorages rise at the foot of a
tidy-looking monastery, set among the steep rocks of
the basalt hillj here cut and painted with raw images
in white and blue, -daubed with raddle, crested with
chortens and flagged sheaves of carving innumerable
with the inevitable om mani padme hum. The bridge
itself is gone, only the chains remain; slings and footway
alike have disappeared, but there is scarcely a sign
of rust or clogging to be seen on the iron.
The Tibetans themselves have long been accustomed
to rely upon the ferry. In their retreat from
their southern and western positions, they had neglected
to destroy the two ferry-boats, to our great advantage.
It is difficult to imagine what we should have done
without them. Each of these great arks is an oblong
lighter, forty feet by twelve, with a four-foot freeboard,
and a quaintly carved' horse’s head at the bows.
The transport of the troops across the river was enormously
hastened by the device used by Captain Sheppard.
He turned these two boats into swinging, bridges,
by the aid o f . stout ropes running on a carrier backwards
and forwards along a steel wire hawser,-which he
here threw across the 120 yards of whirling and swollen
brown water. In this way the interminable waste of
time, caused by the necessary drift down stream of the
big boats in their passages across, , was prevented, and
what had previously taken an hour— with occasional
intervals of three hours, during which the boat had
lumbered two miles down stream, and had to be pain-
fully retrieved and towed back— now took but twenty
The promontory at Chak-sam Ferry, behind which the ferry boats come to shore. Immediately
beyond the point there is always a' string of whirlpools. Here Major Bretherton lost his life.