Who would have thought of my writing to you from Thibet. I am sitting in a little tent about eight feet long, which just takes a narrow cot, a table, and chair of camp dimensions, and my _sac-de-nuit_, gun, &c., and a tin box containing books, papers, and the materials for this present epistle. Under the same tree (a veritable chestnut) is Sir Henry Lawrence's tent, a ditto of mine, in which he is comfortably sleeping, as I ought to be; outside are my pets,--that is, a string of mules who accompany me in all my travels, and have also in the mountains the honor of carrying me as well as my baggage. The kitchen is under a neighboring tree; and round a fire are squatting our gallant guards, a party of Maharaja Gholab Singh's household brigade. Some of his people accompany us, and what with followers, a Moonshee or two for business, and their followers, I dare say we are a party of two or three hundred souls, of all colors and creeds,--Christians, Mussulmans, Hindoos, Buddhists, Sikhs, and varieties of each. The creeds of the party are as varied as their colors; and that's saying a good deal, when you contrast my white face and yellow hair with Sir Henry's nut-brown, the pale white parchmenty-color of the Kashmeree, the honest brunette tinge of the tall Sikh, the clear olive-brown of the Rajpoot, down through all shades of dinginess to the deep black of the low-caste Hindoo. I am one of the whitest men in India, I fancy, as, instead of burning in the sun, I get blanched like endive or celery. How you would stare at my long beard, moustache, and whiskers. However, to return from such personalities to facts. The Indus is brawling along five hundred feet below us, as if in a hurry to get "out of that;" and above, one's neck aches with trying to see to the top of the vast craggy mountains which confine the stream in its rocky channel. So wild, so heaven-forsaken a scene I never beheld; living nature there is none. In a week's journey, I have seen three marmots, two wag-tails, and three jackdaws; and we have averaged twenty miles a day.
We met a lady the other day, in the most romantic way possible, in the midst of the very wildest of glens, and almost as wild weather. She is a young and very pretty creature, gifted with the most indomitable energy and endurance (except as regards her husband, whom she _can't_ endure, and therefore travels alone). But conceive, that for the last three months she has been making her way on pony-back across a country which few _men_ would like to traverse, over the most formidable passes, the deepest and rapidest rivers, and wildest deserts in Asia. For twenty days she was in the extreme wilds of Thibet, without ever seeing a human habitation; making such long day's journeys as often to be without food or bedding, traversing passes from sixteen to eighteen thousand feet above the sea, where you can hardly breathe without pain; enduring pain, sickness, and every other mortal ill, yet persevering still! Poor creature, she is dying, I fear. It is evident that she is in a deep consumption, created by a terrible fall she had down a precipice, at the commencement of her journey. Well, one day we met her between this place and Cashmere. She was sixteen or twenty miles from her tents, and the rain and darkness were coming on apace; the thermometer down below fifty degrees. So we persuaded her to stop at our encampment. I gave her my tent and cot, acted lady's maid, supplied her with warm stockings and shoes, water, towels, brushes, &c., and made her comfortable, and then we sat down to dinner; and a pleasanter evening I never spent. She was as gay as a lark, and poured out stores of information and anecdotes, and recounted her adventures in the "spiritedest" manner. After an early breakfast the next morning, I put her on her pony, and she went on her way, and we saw her no more. I hope she will live to reach the end of her journey, and not die in some wild mountain-side unattended and alone.