tell that he was a sick man.* Bignell you would find
near him, mounted on a horse that looked fitter for a
circus than a campaign, but was useful enough at a rough-
and-tumble skurry up and down rocks, down the face
of any nullah of any angle, through brakes of sallow
thorn or across the stony bottom of a tumbling river.
“ Hippo ” and his rider did yeoman service, and though,
by his own confession, Bignell is not a Ritz, before the
campaign ended the Headquarters’ mess had been
brought to a state of almost unnatural excellence—
so at least Bignell claimed, and he should know. Major
Iggulden might be there too, but more probably he
would be found well in front watching the road.
Lieut.-Col. Waddell, with his strangely laden, attendants,
would be hard by, and not far away O’Connor on his
strawberry and cream mount. After the latter’s exploits
at Pala, Colonel Younghusband set a grim foot
down on the aspirations to any further military glory
of the most irreplaceable man in all that force. Here
you are to imagine a well, but somewhat slightly, built
man of more than the average height with an offhand
courtesy which masks an attractively unselfish nature
and a quick and observant eye. I think, like everyone
else who is worth knowing, he needs to be known, for
it is truer of few people in the world than of O’Connor,
that he attends strictly and exclusively to his own
business; a touch of the recluse— shown in a disinclination
to attend meals— he is still a man with whom
no other man, except by his own fault, could fail to
be on the best of terms. A steady judge of most things
* For three or four days' Macdonald, during his advance • from Chumbi to
the relief of Gyantse, was so ill with gastritis that he had to be carried in a dandy,
and repeatedly afterwards he was compelled to take to his bed b y attack a fter
a ttack of this weakening and lowering sickness.
the Kyi chu.
WE WERE APPROACHING CHUSUL ON THE TSANG-PO. THE
K Y I CHU IS THE STREAM IN THE DISTANCE WHICH HERE
FALLS INTO THE TSANG-PO FROM BEHIND THE PROMONTORY
UPON WHICH CHUSUL IS BUILT. I SHOULD LIKE TO TAKE
THIS OPPORTUNITY OF POINTING OUT THAT NOT ONE OF
THESE PHOTOGRAPHS HAS BEEN TOUCHED IN THE PROCESS
OF REPRODUCTION. THEY HAVE BEEN MADE STRAIGHT
FROM THE o r i g i n a l n e g a t i v e s . Sienna, umber, Vandyke
brown, ash-grey, sky amber and Payne’s grey.