EXPEDITIONS AND EXPLORATIONS
day. Major Iggulden caught me up just before I reached the Samatek Bungalow, wet through, and we were very glad to get into its shelter and to dry our clothes. I continued to have difficulty with transport until we reached Lamteng in the Lachen Valley, where we could get yaks, and then my troubles ended. Travelling in these very sparsely populated valleys, where only coolie transport is available, has many difficulties when a large party has to be moved. Above Lamteng the road is much easier, the gradients are better and the hot steamy valleys are left behind. Yaks, if properly treated, make excellent beasts of burden and throughout the trip I had no difficulty with them; they even crossed almost inaccessible passes with remarkable ease, and it was quite wonderful to see them picking their way through ice and snow where it was difficult even for a man to find a foothold.
After spending some days at Thangu, where I left half the escort under Lieutenant Coleridge as a reserve, and after sending on ahead rations, firewood, &c., we started for the higher lands and camped the first night at Gochung at an elevation of about 14,500 feet. I have always found from 14,000 feet to 15,000 feet a critical height in climbing, and men often feel the effects more at this elevation than higher up; also if they do not feel the height then, they are unlikely to feel it much, even at very much higher elevations. Many of the escort fell out, suffering from mountain sickness and violent headaches, nothing would induce them to go on, and they were so bad next morning we were obliged to send them back. All these men were Nepalese hill men and ought not to have felt the height at all. After this weeding out, although I took several to an elevation of over 20,000 feet, and two of them to 21,600 feet, not a man fell out.
The next day we moved on to Giaogong, a point in the Lachen Valley lying within the boundary, and claimed by the Tibetans. According to the Sikhim-Tibet Treaty of 1890, the boundary between the two countries is defined
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