other than prayer-wheels. Most of the ekkas were drawn by ponies of the small 'country-bred' type brought from India, but the casualties among these were sometimes replaced by draught yaks. From Menza onwards our rice-bag had a choice of mounts. It might go on a pack mule, or meander slowly along on the back of a pack yak, or, with the other bag alongside it, entirely eclipse from human view the most miniature of donkeys, who, nevertheless, if allowed ample time to look about him, and to pick up weird grazing by the roadside, would eventually arrive in camp none the worse, and with his load intact after a uniform progress of about one mile an hour. On one or other of these animals the rice-bag would eventually reach Lhassa, or, if it foregathered with the Lhassa column on its way up, it might be handed over to one of the coolis who accompanied that column. It probably reached Lhassa intact, its waterproof bag having protected it from all weathers; but it might also have got a small hole somewhere among its ample coverings, and lost a pound or two on the way, or--for such is human nature--arrive still weighing the original eighty pounds, but containing a stone or two in the place where some few odd pounds of rice ought to have been. The manners and customs of our various transport animals would form an interesting study in natural history. The yak, to the uninitiated intruder, was of course the most striking. The mule we know, and the donkey we know, and the cooli was more or less of the same species as ourselves; but the yak was a novelty. The yak is a buffalo in petticoats. This seems an incongruous combination, for the _à priori_ idea of a buffalo is of something fierce, and of petticoats, of something not fierce. But in this case petticoat influence has altogether prevailed, for the yak is the mildest natured of animals. He moves very slowly, takes life very quietly, and is content with little here below, or rather here above, for if you take him below 9,000 feet he pines for the heights. I believe he is really at his cosiest when lying in a snowdrift on a winter's day with his petticoats around him and only his horns showing. He then feels really well tucked up. Both yaks and donkeys were very cheap forms of transport. It is true that yaks had a way of dying and donkeys of deserting, but even so their initial cost was very small, they needed very few drivers in proportion to their numbers, and possessed the art of living on the country. An animal that along a line of communications of some four hundred miles' length, and lying in an inhospitable country, neither asks you to bring him up fodder or even grain from the base, nor yet expects you to go foraging for him, is indeed a treasure.