sideration for horses, I resolved that he should never get a ride on the Lama. Ten years later, when he had retired, I met him at Lord North¬ brook’s country place and we had some chaff over this matter, which he had not forgotten.
Early in May the 500 mules which had been sent from Poona to Siligori by rail arrived at the foot of the hills in charge of a sergeant of the Transport Corps, one of the most efficient, energetic and excellent men I have ever worked with. He had a very inferior lot of mule drivers, hastily got together for the expedition. When they got out of the train, the men were rather prematurely served out with warm clothing which had been supplied by the Government; many of them, thinking that if such clothes as these were necessary they would probably be frozen in Tibet, deserted then and there. A lot more were found medically unfit when inspected by Dr. Leahy. As mules are animals which require much experi¬ ence to load and manage, I quite expected that the difficulty of feeding and getting them into condition would be very serious. But with the help of some friendly tea planters I engaged Nepalese contractors who undertook to supply fodder at Darjeeling until we started, and the mules were brought up to the station and picketed in lines on a bare grassy spur above Ging, which is the only open space of any size anywhere near Darjeeling. Here they were allowed to graze for two or three days till the Bhutia milkmen who used this place as a feeding ground for their cows struck work and said that no more milk could be supplied if the mules were allowed to eat up the grass. The European ladies of the station then rose up in arms, and the Commissioner issued an order that the mules were not to go off their pickets in future. By this time a large supply of fodder consisting of the leaves and small stems of the little hill bamboo known as “Maling” was brought in daily by my contractor, who employed 200 Nepalese in cutting and carrying it from the Goom- pahar, where there was a good supply. But again we were met by an outcry from all the private horse-owners that their putta-wallahs (as grasscutters are here called) could not get their usual supplies, and our men were obliged to go ten miles off to the slopes of Tonglu in order to find sufficient fodder. I have often seen the coolies carrying on their backs the bundles ten feet long and four feet in diameter, which, when weighed by the commissariat clerk, scaled over two maunds (160 pounds) apiece.
By this time all the members of the expedition were assembled except Macaulay. When he at last arrived, he told us very little about the progress of the negotiations which were going on daily by telegraph between Simla, Pekin and London. He had sent up a Portuguese cook engaged in Calcutta at a very high salary, and an immense quantity of European tinned luxuries, wines and spirits and liqueurs, among which, I well remember, were several boxes pâté de foie gras in tins. Biscuits, however, which to my idea were a much more necessary article of rations, were conspicuous by their absence, and though we had not less than twelve mule-loads of medical stores and appliances, I was the only member of the expedition who had Elliman’s embrocation or carbolic acid. These and many other little things seemed to point to the fact that, however clever and able Macaulay might be as a diplomatist, he was not
