XIII. THE KARO-LÀ 99 XIV. NAGARTSE: ENVOYS: DEMOLITIONS: BATHS: BOILING WATER 105 XV. LAKE PALTI: DRAWING BLANK: PETE-JONG 112 XVI. OVER THE KAMBA-LÀ: THE LAND OF PROMISE 122 XVII. THE CROSSING OF THE TSANGPO: A SAD ACCIDENT 126 XVIII. THE END OF THE CROSSING: THE 'CHIT' IN TIBET 134 XIX. MONASTERIES: FORAGING IN MONASTERIES: A DREAM 140 XX. REACHING LHASSA: SUPPLIES: MESSING: THE LHASSA BAZAAR 149 XXI. ENOUGH OF LHASSA: A TRIP DOWN COUNTRY: LIFE IN A POST: TRUE HOSPITALITY: A BHUTYA PONY 165 XXII. THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY 181 XXIII. BACK TO INDIA 189 * * * * * LHASSA. (From a photograph) _Frontispiece_ _By permission from 'Black and White'_ TO LHASSA AT LAST CHAPTER I THE WRITING ON THE WALL 'Ain't this ripping?' said I to my wife. 'Yes, delightful,' she said. It really was rather nice. It had been quite hot in the plains, and was pleasantly cool up here. My wife and family had preceded me and had been settled for some weeks in the house which we had taken in the hills for the hot weather, and now I had just arrived on two months' leave. We were sitting over the fire in the drawing-room after dinner, a cosy little room made homelike by a careful selection of draperies and ornaments from the larger drawing-room in the plains. 'Just ripping,' I repeated with sad lack of originality. The ride up the hill from the plains had been fatiguing. The fire was soporific. There was whiskey and soda at my elbow and a cheroot in my mouth (I'm a privileged husband and smoke in the drawing-room). 'Ripping,' I said for the third time, half dozing. 'Come, get up, lazy-bones, and go to bed. You are hopeless as you are.' So I was led to bed. We put out the lamps, and on the hall table found our bedroom candles, which we lit preparatory to climbing the stairs. The staircase set me musing. Some hill houses have them, but they are rare in the plains. The smallness of the rooms, the existence of that narrow staircase, the domestic process of lighting the bedroom candles, the necessity of not waking the baby, the sense of security and of being cut adrift even temporarily from the ties of officialdom--all suggested the peaceful conditions of life enjoyed by the small but solid householder at home. 'We've got it at last,' I exclaimed. 'Got what?' asked my wife.