Our Coolies, Being An Unusually Miserable Crew, We Got Breakfast About
Two P.M. To-Day Our Tent Lamp Finished Its Erratic Life, According To
The Dhobie's Account, By Self-Destruction!
That good for nothing piece
of charcoal had, however, doubtless dashed the solid cut-glass globe,
which formed the chief glory of the instrument, against a rock, while
thinking of his hubble bubble, and his little blackamoors at home.
The lamp had got over all the difficulties of the road from Lahore to
Ladak and back, and had been quite a peep-show to half the natives of
Thibet, who were never tired of regarding their multiplied countenances
in the numerous cut circles of the glass shade, so that we felt quite
grieved at its melancholy loss. Our water bottle also to-day finished
its existence, and the table came into camp a bundle of sticks;
so that everything seemed to betoken the approaching dissolution of
the expedition. The farm-yard consists of five ducks, all strangers,
and a pet sheep, and the khiltas look haggard and dilapidated in the
extreme. The musical cock, alone, of old friends still survives,
but he appears in weak health, and his constitution is evidently
undermined by the changes of climate it has undergone. We were here
worried by a party of strolling mountebanks from the Punjab, who
persisted in horrifying us by making two young girls and three boys,
all apparently entirely destitute of bones, stand upon their heads,
and go through similar performances on the grass.
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