Joint Commissioner and the chief of police as a mutineer and
murderer, and was marched out of Leh. I was asked to look over my
baggage, but did not. I had trusted him, he had been faithful in his
way, and later I found that nothing was missing. He was a brutal
ruffian, one of a band of irregulars sent by the Maharajah of Kashmir
to garrison the fort at Leh. From it they used to descend on the
town, plunder the bazaar, insult the women, take all they wanted
without payment, and when one of their number was being tried for
some offence, they dragged the judge out of court and beat him!
After holding Leh in terror for some time the British Commissioner
obtained their removal. It was, however, at the fort at the Indus
bridge, as related before, that the crime of murder was committed.
Still there was something almost grand in the defiant attitude of the
fantastic swash buckler, as, standing outside the bungalow, he faced
the British Commissioner, to him the embodiment of all earthly power,
and the chief of police, and defied them. Not an inch would he stir
till the wazir gave him a coolie to carry his baggage. He had been
acquitted of the murder, he said, 'and though I killed the man, it
was according to the custom of my country--he gave me an insult which
could only be wiped out in blood!' The guard dared not touch him,
and he went to the wazir, demanded a coolie, and got one!

Our party left Leh early on a glorious morning, travelling light, Mr.
Redslob, a very learned Lhassa monk, named Gergan, Mr. R.'s servant,
my three, and four baggage horses, with two drivers engaged for the
journey. The great Kailas range was to be crossed, and the first
day's march up long, barren, stony valleys, without interest, took us
to a piece of level ground, with a small semi-subterranean refuge on
which there was barely room for two tents, at the altitude of the
summit of Mont Blanc. For two hours before we reached it the men and