2110-7-5-12

Kashgar Sinkiang

July 31 1935

Dear Lord Tweedsmuir

I congratulate you on Canada, and I would congratulate Canada on you if I knew how to do it. You are doubtless sick of congratulations, and my only hope is that mine may have a certain charm or quaintness by virtue of being so almost impossibly late. But the gallant man, and the not less gallant pony, who struggle every week over the passes to Gilgit are the first symptom of a postal system I have seen for several months (I left Peking in February): just as the Consulate Times in which I have just read of your appointment is the first newspaper. So I could'nt really have been less behindhand.

I am quite pleased to have turned the flank of this closed province by descending on it from the mountains to the South: I am more pleased to have reached a place where bath water and beer are both on tap, as incidentally is also your excellent account of Glencoe: and I shall be still more pleased if I get back to the scene of that tragedy before the stalking season is out.

My very best wishes for your new and great undertakings, and my respects to Lady Tweedsmuir. I hope we meet again some day.

Yours very sincerely

Peter Fleming