CHAPTER XY
Are we not happy? Sunlit air,
Soft colour, floods of dewy light,
A flowery perfume everywhere
Pour out their wealth for our delight.
W. Oosse.
I s ta rt for cooler regions—Good ponies and annoying attendants
I lose my temper and feel the h e a t—Arrived in cooler
regions—I arrange my camp and note the colour of spring
flowers.
S earching city waterways and scouring lake lanes had
been pleasant occupations so long as the weather was
not too oppressive and the sun shorn somewhat of his
full power, but there arrived a day when it was too hot
to walk, the lake was too mosquito-covered to be
visited, and merchants and customers were alike too
listless to take interest in the cheapening of an
embroidery or the defeat of a rival salesman. Heat
has a way of drawing the backbone and moral fibre out
of a huinan being, so that all shame ceases a t the
shirking of any effort. Nations would cease to rage and
men to wrangle if only enough warmth could be engendered
to reduce nature to a condition of emotionless
pulp!
Preferring an existence of storm and stress to a
Nirvana of heat, I bethought me of higher levels to
be reached by a day or two of marching, and once more
gave the order for a move. The order was not received
with any thrill of joy by my faithful attendants; for
them it meant that we were leaving the fleshpots of
Egypt to sojourn in the desert, exchanging a place of
cheap grain and many friends, endless opportunities
for gossip, and a warmth which operated more effectively
than many clothes and without the cost, for loneliness
and Cold and few provisions. Sometimes the many must
be sacrificed to the one, and the many, on the mention
of increased pay and plenty of ponies for transport
and riding, cheerfully gave their consent to be
immolated.
The portly and courtly Sir Rao Amamath sent
baggage ponies, and early one morning a lordly procession
was formed on the bank, and slowly drifted off
into the “ ewigkeit,” or more exactly, disappeared down
the immense avenue of poplars leading from the
Residency to the city, from there on towards the
eternal snows. These ponies were far superior to the
casual baggage animals I had employed in other parts
of the valley, there being all the difference between professionals
and amateurs. The latter, or rather their
owners for them, had always begun operations by loud
protestations of the powers of their beasts to carry
limitless burdens, protestations falsified by their incapacity
to accomplish the firm attachment of even the
smaller of the bundles. Then there would follow a
period of three-cornered insults, beasts, owners, and
followers taking equal shares, the beasts contributing
by snorts and kicks. Lastly, a league defensive and
offensive between the three belligerent parties would