Finally the Soubah tried to persuade my people that one so incorrigibly obstinate must be mad, and that they had better leave me. One day, after we had had a long discussion about the geography of the frontier, he inflamed my curiosity by telling me that Kinchinjhow was a very holy mountain; more so than its sister-peaks of Chumulari and Kinchinjunga; and that both the Sikkim and Tibetan Lamas, and Chinese soldiers, were ready to oppose my approach to it. This led to my asking him for a sketch of the mountains; he called for a large sheet of paper, and some charcoal, and wanted to form his mountains of sand; I however ordered rice to be brought, and though we had but little, scattered it about wastefully. This had its effect: he stared at my wealth, for he had all along calculated on starving me out, and retired, looking perplexed and crestfallen. Nothing puzzled him so much as my being always occupied with such, to him, unintelligible pursuits; a Tibetan "cui bono?" was always in his mouth: "What good will it do _you_?" "Why should you spend weeks on the coldest, hungriest, windiest, loftiest place on the earth, without even inhabitants?" Drugs and idle curiosity he believed were my motives, and possibly a reverence for the religion of Boodh, Sakya, and Tsongkaba. Latterly he had made up his mind to starve me out, and was dismayed when he found I could hold out better than himself, and when I assured him that I should not retrace my steps until his statements should be verified by a letter from Tchebu; that I had written to him, and that it would be at least thirty days before I could receive an answer. On the 19th of July he proposed to take me to Tungu, at the foot of Kinchinjhow, and back, upon ponies, provided I would leave my people and tent, which I refused to do. After this I saw little of him for several days, and began to fear he was offended, when one morning his attendant came to me for medicine with a dismal countenance, and in great alarm: he twisted his fingers together over his stomach to symbolise the nature of the malady which produced a commotion in his master's bowels, and which was simply the colic. I was aware that he had been reduced to feed upon "Tong" (the arum-root) and herbs, and had always given him half the pigeons I shot, which was almost the only animal food I had myself. Now I sent him a powerful dose of medicine; adding a few spoonfuls of China tea and sugar for friendship.