After consultation with Muhamed Isa I resolved to hire an auxiliary caravan of 30 horses from Tankse to accompany us for the first month and then return. Hence arose a financial problem. The men of Tankse asked 35 rupees a month for each horse, or 1050 rupees in all; of course they ran great risk, and I must therefore undertake to pay 30 rupees for every horse that fell on the outward journey, and 10 rupees for one that fell on the return home. In the worst case, then, the cost would amount to 1950 rupees. On the other hand, if I bought these horses at 60 rupees a head, the total expenditure would be 1800 rupees, and the horses would belong to me. Then the old problem was repeated: I should have to take fodder for these thirty horses, and engage ten men to attend to them, and for these men provisions must be obtained. After many pros and cons we at length decided to hire the horses only, for then their owners would accompany them at their own risk and supply themselves with rations carried by seven yaks. The provisions for the first month were to be taken from our own animals, to lighten their loads and economize their strength; for a horse or mule always gets tired at the beginning of the journey, and must be spared. But if one of the hired horses became exhausted, its owner was at liberty to send it home before the expiration of the month.
As forage and grazing was dear in Leh, we sent off as early as August 10, 35 mules and 15 horses with their loads, and 15 men and a chaprassi, to Muglib, which lies beyond Tankse and has good pastures. Sonam Tsering, whom Captain Rawling had strongly recommended, was chosen as leader of this caravan. He received 100 rupees for the expenses of the caravan. Muhamed Isa accompanied it part of the way to see that everything went on smoothly.
A few days after his engagement Muhamed Isa presented to me 25 men, who, he proposed, should enter my service. There was no difficulty in finding men willing to come; all Leh would have followed me if wanted. The difficulty was to make a proper choice, and appoint only serviceable men who could fill their posts and understood their duties.
It was a solemn moment when the main body of the caravan assembled in my garden, but the spectacle had its humorous side when Muhamed Isa, proud as a world-conqueror, stepped forward and mustered his legions. At my request Captain Patterson was present to have a look at the fellows; he now delivered a short address, and impressed on them how important it was for their own sakes to serve me honestly. Their pay was fixed at 15 rupees a month, and half a year’s pay was advanced to them. The Rev. Mr. Peter was so kind as to undertake to distribute the money to their families. Lastly, I promised each a present of 50 rupees for good behaviour, and bound myself to guarantee their journey home to Leh, with expenses, from whatever place we might separate.
In the course of my narrative I shall have abundant opportunities of introducing these men individually to my readers. Besides Sonam Tsering, already mentioned, who had served under Deasy and Rawling, I will here name old Guffaru, a greyheaded man with a long white beard, who thirty-three years ago accompanied Forsyth’s embassy to Jakub Bek of Kashgar. He had seen the great Bedaulet (“the fortunate one”) in all his pomp and state, and had many tales of his experiences on Forsyth’s famous journey. I at first hesitated to take with me a man of sixty-two, but he begged so earnestly; he was, he said, Muhamed Isa’s friend, and he was so poor that he could not live if I did not employ him. He had the forethought to pack up a shroud that he might be buried decently if he died on the way. That everything should be properly managed in such case, and that his outstanding pay might be transmitted to his family, he took his son, Kurban, with him. But Guffaru did not perish, but was in excellent condition all the time he was with me (Illustration 31).
Another, on whom I look back with great sympathy and friendly feeling, was Shukkur Ali. I had known him in 1890 in Kashgar, where he was in Younghusband’s service, and he, too, remembered that I had once drawn him in his master’s tent. He was so unconsciously comical that one almost died of laughter as soon as he opened his mouth, and he was my oldest acquaintance among this group of more or less experienced Asiatics. He had taken part in Wellby’s journey, and gave us the most ghastly descriptions of the sufferings the captain, who afterwards fell in the Boer War, and his caravan had to endure in North Tibet, when all the provisions were consumed and all the animals had perished. A year later he shared in my boating trips on the holy lake, Manasarowar, and was as useful as he was amusing. Shukkur Ali was an honest soul, and a stout fellow, who did his work without being told, quarrelled with no one, and was ready and willing for any kind of service. He was always in the highest spirits, even during a violent storm in the middle of the lake, and I saw him weep like a child on two occasions only—at the grave of Muhamed Isa, and when we said the last good-bye.
| 31. Guffaru. |
These three were Mohammedans, as their names show. The caravan contained eight sons of Islam in all; the leader, Muhamed Isa, was the ninth. The other seventeen were Lamaists. Then came two Hindus, a Catholic, Manuel, and two Protestants, Robert and myself. I will not vouch for the religious convictions of the Lamaists. As regards some among them, I found that they sometimes changed their religion. For instance, Rabsang, when he travelled to Yarkand, was a Mohammedan and shaved his head, but on the way to Tibet he was just as zealous a believer in Lamaism.
The oldest of my companions was Guffaru, sixty-two, and the youngest Adul, twenty-two, and the average age of the whole company was thirty-three years. Eleven of these men came from Leh, the others from different villages of Ladak. Only one was a foreigner, the Gurkha Rub Das from the frontier of Nepal. He was quiet and faithful, and one of my very best men. It was a pity he had no nose; in a hot scuffle in Lhasa an opponent had bitten off that important and ornamental organ.