I shall not lengthen out an already long record by describing our journey from Calcutta, where we did much of our fitting out, up to Kashmir, on over the passes to Yarkand, and thence round the north of the Tarim Desert. Nor shall I describe the high passes of the snow-line, nor the precipitous cliff roads and the overhanging _paris_, nor the grey snow-fed torrents we traversed. The journey was full of interest and incident, and we met all kinds of strange peoples. Ladakhis, in heavy duffle clothes, Chinese merchants in high felt boots, Khirgiz men in big mushroom hats, and Khirgiz women in tall white head-dresses recalling pictures of Plantagenet days, long caravans of shaggy camels, droves of fat-tailed sheep--such were our acquaintances as we wound along day after brief day and week after long week on our little mountain ponies or on foot over the towering heights. Nor is there space to describe our adventures with officious Chinese Ambans, who were over-punctilious in the matter of passports, and who had to be pacified in various ways. Sufficient has already been written by various writers concerning these well-known highways, and this aims at being a record of adventure rather than a guide-book. In any case, beyond Aksu I have altered the names and localities and the compass bearings pretty considerably. Having made a few discoveries, we are not inclined to give them away. Recent happenings have altered our ideas on the commercial value of book, photo, and lecture rights, and for the moment, anyway, we have no desire to indicate our footsteps too closely to others who might wish to follow. So, saving for the fact that we passed within measurable distance of Hami on our way into the Gobi Desert beyond it, this record will not give any particularly valuable data. It was the end of November when we met in the Gymkhana at Karachi; it was late September of the following year that at last saw us at our starting-place, the tiny village Wrexham had visited on his first trip. The particular point from where I am now taking up the story is vivid in my memory, because it was the day after we had lost our cook. He had long been a thorn in our sides, more particularly in Wrexham’s, who ran our messing arrangements. Still he had some ideas of the preparation of food in a form more or less consumable by Europeans. Whether he was tired of long marches, or whether he was afraid of going too far toward China, or whether he considered that Wrexham was too knowledgeable a person for an “honest” Ladakhi to get rich on, and that more profitable pickings could be got with some passably ignorant sahib whose business was the securing of record heads in the mountains, one or two of which folk we had met on our journey up, I can’t say.