rt. But here night brings with it no
sense of gloom and darkness, much less death. Far otherwise, for
now it seems as if we were only beginning our intenser and still
wider life. The fret of ordinary life is soothed away in the serene
ending of the day. The quietness, profound and meaningful, yet
further calms our spirit. Every condition is now favourable for the
life of that inmost soul of us, which is too sensitive often to emerge
into the glare and rubs of daylight life, but which in this holy peace,
in the presence of the heavenly mountains, and with the stars above
to guide it, can reach out to its fullest extent and indulge its highest
aspirations.

CHAPTER VII

HIGH SOLITUDES

From these scenes of tropical luxuriance and teeming life I would
transport the Artist to a region of austerest beauty, far at the back of
the Himalaya, where only one white man as yet has penetrated:
where no life at all exists--no tree, no simplest plant, no humblest
animalcula; where, save for some rugged precipice too steep for
snow to lie, and save also for the intense azure of the sky, all is
radiant whiteness. A region far distant from any haunt of man,
where reigns a mountain which acknowledges supremacy to Mount
Everest alone. A region of completest solitude, where the solemn
silence is unbroken by the twitter of a single bird or the drone of the
smallest insect, and is disturbed only by the occasional thunder of an
avalanche or the grinding crunch of the glacier as a reminder of the
titanic forces which are perpetually though invisibly at work.

Freezing this region is and full of danger. And there is no short cut
to it and no easy means of transport. Only men in the prime of health
can reach there and return. And it is only men whose faculties are at
their finest who are fit to stand the austerity of its cold, stern beauty.
It lies at the dividing line between India and Central Asia where the
waters which flow to India are parted from the waters which flow to
Central Asia, and where the Indian and Chinese Empires touch one
another. It may be approached from two directions--from Turkistan
or from Kashmir and the Karakoram Pass. The Artist had better
approach it by Kashmir, for he will see there certain beauties which
even Sikkim does not possess, and this will make him further realise
the variety of beauty this earth displays.

Kashmir is altogether different from Sikkim. In Sikkim the valleys
are deep, steep, and narro