I dashed off the picture as usual very hastily, but never was a rash venture rewarded with poorer result, and those eternal giants remained unpainted.
Disconsolate, I made my way down. It was more difficult even than the climb up. A false step, a slip, and it might have cost my life, especially along the steep precipice, where I had to cling to anything projecting in the wall-like rock. I had gone four thousand feet higher than the camp, reaching an elevation of 11,450 feet above sea level.
It was this performance, watched anxiously from my camp down below, as well as by the army of men belonging to the Deputy Commissioner of Almora, who was also here encamped, that won me the name among the natives of "Chota Sahib," the "Langur," the "small sir," the "monkey," a name of which I have been proud ever since.
Some seventy-three miles from Pithoragarh the Shankula River enters the Kali, the course of the Shankula being roughly from N.N.W. to S.S.E.
The track once crossed, the Shankula stream tends towards the South-East and with a gentle incline rises to 8570 feet at Gibti, where I encamped somewhat above the Gala Daramsalla. I had gone through forests of maple, beech, oak and rhododendrons, with a thick undergrowth of scrub and bamboo.
The Kali River, about two thousand feet down below my camp, marks the boundary between Nepal and Kumaon. From this high point the foaming stream can be seen for miles, winding between thickly wooded hills and mountains like a silver ribbon on a dark reposeful background.
The march from my last camp was a very short one, so I had the greater part of the day left for work. Previously I had usually halted in Daramsallas (stone-walled shelters), and in default of these my men put up for me a neatly-made "Chahna"[5] or "chöpper," a hut of mats and branches of trees, in the construction of which the Paharis are wonderfully dexterous. I had also my small "mountain tent," a _tente d'abri_, quite comfortable enough for ordinary requirements.
It seems, however, that this style of travelling is not considered _comme il faut_ by the officials of India. It is the number and size of one's tents, according to these authorities, that make one a greater or a smaller gentleman! I had put up my tent--three feet high, seven feet long, and four feet wide--by the side of the two double-leaf eighty pound tents of the Deputy Commissioner, but this official and his companions were far from pleased with this act of familiarity. For a double-tented sahib to be seen in company of another sahib whose bijou tent rose from the ground hardly up to one's waist, was _infra dig_ and a serious threat to the prestige of the British in India. I was therefore politely requested to move from my cosy quarters to a more dignified abode lent me by the one-eyed Lal Sing, a Tokudar[6] and brother of the Patwari.[7]