The pitching of camp at the close of day bears with
it many memories which bring before the mind much
of that daily life in Tibet which is liable to be forgotten
by reason of its sameness or its supposed lack of
interest, though in reality nothing affects the health
and happiness of a company so much as a pleasant
situation and genial surroundings. Camps are sharply
divided in the memory into three divisions: intolerable,
tolerable and delightful. The first brings with it the
most dreary associations. A long march in the face
of biting winds; a particularly obstreperous herd of
Tibetan yaks, which periodically buck off their loads;
an arrival at sunset at a wind-swept plain where,
look as one may, there is no particle of shelter from
the freezing blast and no brushwood for fuel; where
the yaks, seized by the horns, rush hither and thither
refusing to be unloaded, and tent-poles and boxes are
hurled helter-skelter in their headlong flight, while the
drivers whistle and whirl their long slings and one
hears the sharp thud of stones on the recalcitrant
animal s ; the tent-peg mallet lost or half the tent-pole
missing; the pitching of tents in a storm of rain and
the piling of boulders on the tent-flaps to keep out all
the wind that is possible ; a dinner off cold leavings,
such as they are, for ourselves, while the rest of the
company, less fortunate, eat sugar and uncooked
sweet flour, for no fire to cook the evening meal can
burn in the driving b la st; then the final quiet which
marks deep slumber, while the weary sentry paces his
rounds, envious of the warm beds of his comrades ;
such are the memories connected with encampments
which can deservedly be called unpleasant. In contrast
to this is the other extreme, and its delightful
associations finger long in the mind. Picture a verdant
meadow with a gently flowing stream, in which the
camp-followers spend the day catching fish with their
hands (they have no nets), a spot sheltered from winds,
rich in fuel, where the tents form a picturesque setting
to the beauty of the scene, and later cheerful campfires
speak of the evening meal enjoyed in comfort,
and cheery laughter, heard late into the night, is witness
of general contentment, while the glorious moon
sheds a dazzling radiance unequalled elsewhere in the
whole of this fair world. Such scenes and such memories
are not lightly forgotten, and, mingling with those that
fie between the one extreme and the other, form some
of the most lasting recollections of Tibet, for the simple
reason that they were our daily experiences.