“That is true,” exclaimed two voices in the crowd; “if he pays 20 rupees a day, he cannot go far.”
Dorche Tsuen rose and called some of the other men to a consultation outside the tent, and when he came back again he said that I might have my wish, if I would sign a written declaration that I took upon myself all responsibility for the consequences, for he wished to be free from blame if any misfortune befell me. Of course I promised to sign such a document with pleasure.
Thus the matter was arranged. Nima Tashi (Illust. 353), a powerful man of pleasant aspect, and dressed in a loose sheepskin, was to be chief of the bodyguard, and as he said he did not know the road to the north, Panchor (Illust. 332), a man fifty-five years of age, was ordered to act as guide. He was called into the tent. I had not seen him before, but Abdul Kerim said that he was the same man who on April 23 had shown us the way to the foot of the Kinchen-la, and that he had seen me and Muhamed Isa last year in Saka-dzong. He was a little, thin, wiry man who had killed eighty yaks with the gun he always carried. To everything that was said to him he agreed submissively with “La lasso, la lasso.” We could see that he was sly and knavish—just the stuff we wanted.
With him and all the other company we rode on May 4 over the pass Gara-la, and from its rather flat threshold saw Kamba Tsenam’s tent still in the same place. Here we crossed, then, our route of April 22, and had made a loop round the snowy massive Chomo-uchong.
Panchor was the elder brother of Kamba Tsenam, and it struck me as curious that when the Governor of Saka pitched his tent beside that of the wealthy nomad, the latter did not come out to welcome him. Now a collection of tents had sprung up in the valley larger than at any of the foregoing camps. Couriers and messengers came and went, small yak caravans came up to the tents with provisions for the officials, and nomads had come in from the neighbourhood to have a look at the eccentric European who had come down like a bomb into the country and had been caught at last.
| 351. Guests at the Opening of my Tent on the Bank of the Teri-nam-tso. (Over the opening a plaid is stretched as a protection against the sun.) |
| 352. The Yaks fording the River Soma-tsangpo. |
Late in the evening Kamba Tsenam came sneaking into my tent. He was very mysterious, and said that the Governor and his people had no notion that he was paying me a visit in the darkness. He wished only to say that Panchor could very well contrive that I should go almost anywhere I liked. The escort had strict orders from the authorities, but only Panchor knew the way, and could easily throw dust into the eyes of the other men. I had only to make my wishes known to Panchor and he would manage the rest. If also a band of fifty robbers swept down on us like a whirlwind, they would disperse like sheep as soon as they knew that Panchor with his never-failing gun was with us. Kamba Tsenam thus revealed himself as a cunning rogue, who had not the slightest respect for the authorities of Saka. The old fool promised that I should travel by the roads I wished if, in return, I would contrive that he should be governor of Saka. What he said was only idle talk, and he himself was a fellow to be on our guard against. There was not a man in Bongba who had ever heard of him, and his great power existed only in his own imagination. In his own village he was known and flattered on account of his great wealth, and he boasted that no robber dared to touch his flocks, for he was their trusted friend. “I am the father of all the robbers,” he said modestly.
I willingly accepted his invitation to visit his tent next morning. When I had passed it the first time it was in a snowstorm, and I had looked upon it as a serious menace to my plans and my freedom. Almost like a thief in the night, expecting to be discovered every moment, I had stolen past the black nomad dwelling. Now I approached it as an honoured guest, only barked at by dogs.
The huge tent, made of a number of pieces of material, is supported by three veritable masts, firmly fixed in the ground. A stone wall runs along the inner side, and in front of it are heaps of tsamba, rice, and corn sacks. Baskets and boxes stand full of clothing. The altar, a wooden shelf and a table are laden with gaos, images, votive bowls, praying mills, and holy books. In one corner stand perhaps a dozen guns with streamers on their rests, and in another as many swords. On the hearth, built on the left of the entrance, always stands a large tea-kettle boiling, ready for any guests that may come in. A battery of wooden cups stands on a stone slab ready for use. The bluish grey smoke rises up towards the chimney opening. Far away from the entrance, at the right corner, the master of the house has his seat of honour, a small divan with a stool table before it, and before this again a fireplace, like a hollow cracked cannon-ball, filled with reeking dung embers. Some of Kamba Tsenam’s shepherds are sitting in a group drinking tea, in another part some small black children are playing, and in a third the women of the tent are tittering. With pure white short hair, wrinkled like crushed parchment, stone-blind, and dressed like Monna Vanna only in a cloak, Kamba Tsenam’s eighty-three-year-old mother sits on her bed and swings her prayer-mill with the right hand, while her left hand keeps the beads of her rosary in constant motion. She prattles and murmurs prayers, sometimes drops her rosary to catch a troublesome insect, and sometimes lets the prayer-mill stop when she is plunged in vague dreamy thought. Twice she asked if the European were still there and if he had been offered tea and food.