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The sardar Gyaljen had accompanied Colonel Howard-Bury’s party on the first Expedition, and had, apparently, from the accounts given of him in last year’s volume, not been a very great success. I, however, gave him a second chance. He was a thoroughly capable man, and I had every hope, as he knew that I had heard about him and had also seen the report that had been made of him by Colonel Howard-Bury, that on this occasion he would pull himself together and do well; in this we were not disappointed. Of course, as all sophisticated men in his position are likely to do, he was out to benefit himself; but we were able pretty successfully to cope with this failing, and, generally speaking, his services were of great value, especially on certain occasions. Altogether, I think, he was a success.

Of course, we were rather well qualified from this point of view—both Morris and Geoffrey Bruce had an excellent knowledge of Nepal and of the Nepalese, and Nepalese is the one Eastern language which I may say that I also have a good knowledge of. All Sherpas are tri-lingual—that is to say, they talk their own Sherpa dialect of Tibet, Tibetan as a mother-tongue, and nearly all of them Nepalese as well. Owing to their being subjects of Nepal, the official language (that is, Nepalese) is the one they are obliged to employ in dealing with the authorities. Also nearly every one of the Tibetans we employed and who came with us from Darjeeling spoke Nepali as their second language. In consequence of this, nearly the whole of the work usually done by a sardar of coolies in Darjeeling was carried out by the officers of the Expedition, who dealt directly both with the men and with the people of the country.