How were these beasts to be fed, and how was the whole apparatus of an army to be carried along, when every additional transport animal was a tax on the resources of the transport? There were two possible solutions, each at first sight equally absurd and impracticable:--wheeled transport in Tibet, or animals that did not require feeding. The Supply and Transport men were resourceful and fortunate enough to provide both. It was due to the light ekka and that providentially ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach Lhasa.
The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and carried by coolies from the cart-road at Rungpo eighty miles over the snow passes to Kamparab on the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of these light carts is 400 pounds, two and a half times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen in Tibet, and they saved the situation.
The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna plains, and down the Nyang Chu Valley as far as Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.
The yak is the most extraordinary animal Nature has provided the transport officer in his need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of grass, tamarisk, and tufts of lichen, that he picks up on the road. He moves slowly, and wears a look of ineffable resignation. He is the most melancholy disillusioned beast I have seen, and dies on the slightest provocation. The red and white tassels and favours of cowrie-shells the Tibetans hang about his neck are as incongruous on the poor beast as gauds and frippery on the heroine of a tragedy.
If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties would be reduced to a minimum. But he is not. We have seen how the four thousand died in their passage across Sikkim without doing a day's work. Local drafts did better. Yet I have often passed the Lieutenant in command of the corps lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of my cows died this morning. Look, there goes another! D--n the beasts! I believe they do it out of spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport officer, always a humorist in adversity, when asked why they were dying off every day, said: 'I think it must be due to overfeeding.' But we owe much to the yak.