say certain prayers and make
sacrifices as they proceed. The more fanatical perform the journey
serpentwise, lying flat on the ground at each step. Others do it on
their hands and knees, and others walking backward.

Tize, or Kelas, has an elevation of 21,830 feet, and Nandiphu, west of
it, 19,440 feet. North-west of the sacred mountain are visible other
summits 20,460 feet, 19,970 feet, and 20,280 feet high.

While I was sketching this panorama a snow leopard bounded gracefully
before us. Animal life seemed to abound. I had a shot or two at a _thar_
(mountain goat), and we saw any number of _kiang_ (wild horse). We found
rhubarb, which seemed to be thriving at so high an elevation as 17,000
feet, and quantities of yellow flowers in the same locality and at the
same elevation. At 19,000 feet I netted two couples of small
white-and-black butterflies. They seemed to have great difficulty in
flying.

On nearing the lakes the atmosphere seemed saturated with moisture. No
sooner had the sun gone down than there was a heavy dew, which soaked
our blankets and clothes. We were at 16,550 feet in a narrow, marshy
creek in which we had descended precipitously from the last mountain
range. From the summit of the range we had seen many columns of smoke
rising from the neighborhood of the Devil's Lake. We judged that we must
again proceed with great caution.

We cooked our food. In the middle of the night, for greater safety, we
shifted our camp in a north-easterly direction on the summit of the
plateau. We continued our journey in the morning high above the
magnificent blue sheet of the Devil's Lake with its pretty islands.

"Sir, do you see that island?" exclaimed Nattoo, pointing at a barren
rock in the lake. "On it," he continued, "lives a hermit Lama, a saintly
man. He has been there alone for many years, and he is held in great
veneration by the Tibetans. He exists almost entirely on fish and
occasional swan's eggs. Only in winter, when the lake is frozen, is
communication established with the shore, and supplies of _tsamba_ are
brought to him. There are no boats on the Devil's Lake, nor any way of
constructing rafts, owing to the absence of wood. The hermit sleeps in a
cave, but generally comes out in the open to pray to Buddha."

During the following night, when everything was still, a breeze blowing
from the north conveyed to us, faint and indistinct, the broken howls of
the hermit.

"What is that?" I asked of the S