.....
Stein would have preferred to travel with an Indian staff,
supplemented by "a couple of Chinese literati". However, he
was almost seventy, had lost the toes on his right foot to
frostbite, and suffered from chronic dyspepsia, so the
Bostonians urged him to take an American assistant. In 1922,
Stein had met a young American diplomat Cornelius van H.
Engert, at Mohand Marg, Stein's lofty mountain camp, north
of Srinagar in Kashmir. Engert now volunteered to
accompany Stein, adding:
As a matter of fact, I would rather be your "bearer" in Central Asia
than Ambassador to the Pope.
But, as Stein complained to Keltie, there was the problem of
Engert's great lacuna, the want of all geological training..
Instead, Stein selected as his assistant the thirty-four year
old Milton Bramlette (1896-1977) from Tulsa, Oklahoma,
whose mentor was the distinguished Yale geographer,
Professor Ellsworth Huntington.
Before meeting Stein, Bramlette had graduated from the
University of Wisconsin and enlisted as a pilot in World War
I, although too late in the war to see combat.
In 1921 he
joined the US Geological Survey as an assistant geologist.
During a stint on a mapping project of eastern Montana and
the Missouri Breaks, "Bram", as he was known, proved to be a
master of plane table surveying and to have a natural eye for
collecting fossils. In the coming years he would earn a
reputation as "the sharpest fossil finder in California".
Bramlette pursued his graduate studies at Yale in 1924/25
and then spent three years with Gulf Oil in Venezuela,
Mexico and Ecuador, before finally receiving his doctorate in
1936.
He became one of the world's leading experts on
sedimentary palaeography, and during World War II he led a
strategic mineral project for the US Geological Survey,
which identified major sources of bauxite ore essential for
aluminum production.
His students remembered him as an
exceptional teacher - he taught at UCLA between 1940-51,
and subsequently at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.
During the course of his long career, he
authored several books and numerous papers. He received
many honours including election to the (U.S.) National
Academy of Sciences, receipt of the Academy's Thompson
Medal, as well as honorary doctorates.
Upon his return from
Central Asia, he married Valerie Jourdan of Branford,
Connecticut, and had one daughter, Emily, and five
grandchildren. In 1977 Bramlette died of emphysema.
His
obituary states that "throughout his life he was a modest
gentleman"
So traumatized was he by his experiences in
China that, although his bibliography is quite extensive, he
never once wrote about his Central Asian experience. Nor is
there any mention of Stein in Bramlette's papers now housed
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University
of California, San Diego.
........
Bramlette's brief was to relieve Stein "of at least a portion
of the work which transport and camp management
demands often at the expense of scientific tasks, and to
provide that geological knowledge which is found to be
required for the proper interpretation of facts bearing on the
prehistory of sites". The latter were skills that Stein admitted
to lacking.........
At Cambridge Stein had also met Bramlette, who was to make
his way to Kashmir, bring a carefully packed Marconi
wireless receiver, and obtain "some colloquial knowledge of
Hindustani". The geologist was also told to develop a
working knowledge of photography, but, more important
than that, "it should be distinctly desirable" for the geologist
to gain practical experience at the Fogg in the "removal of
wall paintings". Stein proposed to take a limited quantity of
necessary chemicals, which Bramlette was to obtain from
the Fogg. Langdon Warner was to supply all "the needed
facilities for this purpose"....
On 11 August he set out from Kashmir, accompanied by Bramlette
and, of course, his dog, Dash V. (Stein named all his dogs
"Dash". Dash V, the only one that was not a fox-terrier, died in
Kashgar, the strain of the Expedition being too much for
him.)...........
On his arrival at the Chinese frontier, Stein heard that
the Governor of Sinkiang had received orders from Nanking
to bar his entry. Telegrams sped among British diplomats in
Nanking, New Delhi and Kashgar. Finally, after the British
reminded the Governor that he was "under distinct
obligations" to them for consignments of arms and
ammunition, the Chinese allowed Stein to enter, and on 6
October he received a friendly welcome in Kashgar.
However, Bramlette, who had proved to be "a steady and
thoroughly useful helper", was forced to return to India
before the passes closed for winter. The thirty-four year old's
constitution was not up to the task: he had suffered
from poor circulation in the freezing temperatures and a
"succession of intestinal troubles, with the alternation from
constipation and resulting piles to attacks of diarrhea".
A chastened Bramlette telegraphed Sachs reporting that it was
not "easy to admit that a young man cannot stand up to
conditions that one does of Sir Aurel's age". At almost 68
years, Stein was twice Bramlette's age.
............