During the meal, tea was served in all sorts of fashions. There was Chinese tea and Indian tea, tea boiled with sugar and tea without it, tea with milk, and tea with butter and salt in it, pale tea and dark tea, sweet tea and bitter tea—in fact, tea until I—devoted as I am to it—wished that no tea-leaf had ever been picked and stewed in boiling water.
CHAPTER XX
Dr. Wilson joins my expedition for a few marches—What misdeeds a photographic camera can do—Weighing, dividing, and packing provisions—Two extra men wanted—The last friendly faces.
I was examining a young woman who had badly injured and partly fractured a central vertebra of the spine, when Dr. Wilson turned up and gave the poor wretch the little relief possible in her condition, for which she had hoped in vain from me. He was welcome to me for many reasons besides the pleasure of being in his company. He had offered to join my expedition for a few marches into Tibet, and I was glad indeed to have him with me. We pushed on as soon as possible over the road between Nabi and Kuti, which I have already described. Our journey was quite uneventful, and the snow-bridges and snow-fields, so troublesome when I had first taken this road, had melted and altogether disappeared. Even at Nabi little happened. But I must just mention the following incident as illustrative of the curious suspicion and dislike I found everywhere of the photographic apparatus I carried with me.
I was on the point of leaving the place when a handsome Tibetan woman, whom I had not previously noticed, accosted me with hysterical sobs—inarticulate, but conveying a very clear impression of suffering.
"You have killed my child, and now you will kill my husband," she complained, when she was able to talk; and I then discovered that I had on my previous visit to Nabi taken a snap-shot at a child perched on the top of a very heavy load that happened to be carried on the woman's back through my camp, and that when she complained I had appeased her, in the usual way, with a coin. She had conveyed her load to Kuti, and had slipped, on her way back, with her child—at a spot not far from where I had had my slide—but, less fortunate than myself, had rolled right into the foaming stream. She managed to cling to the rock and was eventually saved, but the infant was washed from rock to rock by the current, and disappeared under a snow tunnel.
"Oh, sahib!" cried the woman, "if you had not before we started looked at us through the eyes (the twin lenses) of your black box (the photographic camera), I should not have lost my baby."
