ne by one escape.... The animals clambered toward
the higher elevations where the banditti lay in waiting.... Their
movements being impeded by the hair pins on their legs they offered
an apparently easy PRIZE to the superstitious Islamites.... Abandoning
their present enterprise against our party they dashed after the
deceptive animals and disappeared over the hills in a mad scamper for
GOOD LUCK.... This little ruse cleared our pathway and permitted us to
reach Saspoula before the sun had set.... Here we passed a number
of shrines besides the French and Thibetan convents.... Avoiding the
convent with the tri-color floating from its mast we approached the
other.... Here again were the dusty idols, banners and flags thrown
into one corner, the floors littered with ugly masks and prayer wheels
and books and rolls upon rolls of sacred papers mutely breathing their
delegated prayers.

"... As we had been informed, the lamas here were ready to receive us,
with meal and beds prepared and our own apartments all in order.... The
Lama who greeted us was about five feet tall, low flat forehead, flat
nose, full thick lips, rather round small head and with a sweep of
black whiskers falling from his chin.... In fact, NONE of these lamas
are GRAY,--the only thing that suggests AGE is their stooped and
slender bodies and bent and bony fingers.... AND THEY ALLOW THE
PRACTICE OF POLYANDRY in their diocese!... One woman has a dozen
husbands ... and every THIRD man we meet with is a lama.

"... Still the women we see here are more attractive than those we
encountered in Cashmere.

"... Before leaving the convent we were again cautioned against
holding conversation with STRANGERS we might encounter in the numerous
caravans along the road to LEH.... We punctiliously obeyed these
instructions during the rest of our journey until we reached the
PETAK convent, which stands upon an isolated rock beside an abandoned
garrison or fort, with its two towers looking like ant hills beside
the majestic mountain that rises ten thousand feet above our resting
place.... This mountain is the sentinel that protects our entrance
into Thibet.... Six miles away is LEH, elevated eleven thousand
feet above the lowlands and around whose shadowy convents rise those
immense granite pinnacles to an elevation of eighteen thousand feet,
where their frosty crests are enshrouded in the fezzes of eternal
snows!...

"... Leh, with its circlet of stubby aspen trees, i