At the beginning of October the Viceroy and Lady Minto set out on an excursion into the mountains, and after a hearty farewell and warm thanks for all the kindness they had showered on me, I remained lonely and forlorn in the great palace. My steamer would not leave Bombay for a week, and I was delighted to be the guest of Lord Kitchener in his residence, Snowdon, during the five days I was yet to stay in Simla. I shall never forget these days. My room was decorated with flowers, and on a table stood fourteen books on Tibet, chosen from the General’s library to supply me with entertaining reading. With the aides-de-camp Captains Wyllie and Basset, merry fellows and good comrades, we lived like four bachelors, took breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, and spent the evening in the billiard-room, on the mantelpiece of which was the appropriate motto, “Strike, and fear not.”
In the afternoon the General took me out along the road leading to Tibet. We then talked of the future of Europe in Asia and Africa, and I gained a greater insight than I had ever done before into Lord Kitchener’s life and work in Egypt.
But the days at Snowdon also came to an end, and on October 11, when the people were flocking to church, I was driven by the victor of Africa to the station, where I took a last farewell of the man for whose exploits I have always felt a boundless admiration. At Summerhill station, below the Viceregal Lodge, I exchanged a last shake of the hand with my dear friend Dunlop Smith, and then the white houses of Simla vanished in the distance, and the train rolled down to the heat of India and the great lonely sea.
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