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them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan Mahatmas as I was myself
at that time. I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of
the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and lived with them for years.
They laughed at our perplexity. One of them showed us an admirably
executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an eminently holy person,
and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi (now my revered master),
to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated. A few days after my
arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook accidentally came to
our house to sell his things. Sundook was for years well-known in
Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant trader in Tibetan
knick-knacks, who visited the country every year in the exercise of his
profession. He came to the house several times during our stay there,
and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity of bearing and pleasant
manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen. No man could discover in
him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized
savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans. He
might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too
good to be one. He came to the house while I was there. On the first
occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an
employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter. But we
soon found out that the peculiar dialect of Hindi which he spoke was
intelligible to some of us without any interpreter, and so there was
none needed on subsequent occasions. On the first day we put him some
general questions about Tibet and the Gelugpa sect, to which he said he
belonged, and his answers corroborated the statements of Bogle, Turnour
and other travelers. On the second day we asked him if he had heard of
any persons in Tibet who possessed extraordinary powers besides the
great lamas. He said there were such men; that they were not regular
lamas, but far higher than they, and generally lived in the mountains
beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of Lhassa. These men, he said,
produce many and very wonderful phenomena or "miracles," and some of
their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in Tibet, cure the sick by
giving them to eat the rice which they crush out of the paddy with their
hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious idea. Without saying one word,
the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma Koothoomi was show