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Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet by William Henry Knight
page 27 of 276 (09%)
JUNE 8. -- To-day Rajoo is still hard at work laying in stores from
the bazaars and arranging means of transport for them; the weather hot
beyond measure; and as neither our food nor quarters are very good,
we begin to forget our lessons of resignation, more especially as
the mosquitoes begin to form a very aggravating item in our destiny.

JUNE 9. -- About four P.M. the Q.M.G. came in triumphantly with about
sixteen tall baskets covered with leather, which he called "khiltas;"
and having ranged them about the room like the oil-jars of "Ali Baba,"
he proceeded to cram them with potatoes, tea, clothes, brandy, and the
whole stock of our earthly goods, in a marvellous and miscellaneous
manner, very trying to contemplate, and suggestive of their entire
separation from us and our heirs for ever.

Coolies not being procurable in sufficient numbers to carry away
all our stores together, F. and I agreed to start in the morning,
leaving the head of affairs with the rearguard to follow at his
leisure. Got away at last in two "palkees," with four "banghy
wallahs," or baggage-bearers, carrying our immediate possessions,
guns, &c. Spent the night wretchedly enough, the roads being of the
worst, and covered nearly a foot deep everywhere with fine dust,
which our bearers very soon stirred up into an impenetrable cloud,
enveloping us in its folds to the verge of suffocation.

The sensation is strange enough, travelling in this way along a lonely
road at dead of night, closely shut up in an oblong box, and surrounded
by some twenty or more dusky savages, who could quietly tap one on
the head at any time, and appropriate the bag of rupees -- inseparable
from Indian travelling -- without the slightest difficulty. That they
do not do so is probably from the knowledge they possess that with
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