ge with snow peaks
could just be perceived in the distance. I could see very little snow
near by, except on the northern slope of the range I was standing on, and
on the hill-tops which dotted the plateau.

I had barely taken it in, barely realised the wonder of nature asleep
when the mist again rose before me and I saw a gigantic phantom rising
out of it. It stood in the centre of a luminous circle, a tall, dark
figure in the folds of an enormous veil of mist. The effect was
overwhelming, and it was only after some moments that I realised that the
spectre wore my features, was a liquid presentation of my own proportions
colossally enlarged; that I stood in the centre of a lunar rainbow, and
that I was gazing on the reflection of myself in the mist. As I moved my
arms, my body, or my head, the ghostlike figure moved, and I felt myself
irresistibly changing my postures--oddly and nervously at first--then,
with an awakening sense of the ridiculous in my actions--so as to make my
image change and do as I did. I felt like a child placed for the first
time in front of a mirror.

The illustration on page 145 represents a solar spectre with circular
rainbow which I saw later on at a comparatively low altitude; the lunar
effect differed from this in that the colours of the rainbow were but
faintly distinguishable.

The Rongba had fallen exhausted, and I felt so faint with the awful
pressure on my lungs, that, despite all my efforts to resist it, I
collapsed on the snow. The coolie and I, shivering pitifully, shared the
same blanket for additional warmth. Both of us were seized with
irresistible drowsiness, as if we had taken a strong narcotic. I fought
hard against it, for I well knew that if my eyelids once closed they
would almost certainly remain so for ever. I called to the Rongba. He was
fast asleep. I summoned up my last atom of vitality to keep my eyes open.
The wind blew hard and biting, with a hissing noise. How that hiss still
sounds in my ears! It seemed like the whisper of death. The Rongba,
crouched with teeth chattering, was moaning, and his sudden shudders
bespoke great pain. It seemed only common charity to let him have the
blanket, which was in any case too small for both, so I wrapped it
tightly round his head and body. He was doubled up with his chin on his
knees. This small exertion was quite sufficient to make me lose the
tug-of-war in which I was pulling against nature. Just like the subject
who, under