gs crossed and maintaining my equilibrium. Unfortunately,
it was already too late.

Evening was falling when I approached the village of Hori. Exhausted by
fatigue; racked by the incessant jolting; my legs feeling as if invaded
by millions of ants, I had been completely incapable of enjoying the
picturesque landscape spread before us as we journeyed along the
Djeloum, the banks of which are bordered on one side by steep rocks and
on the other by the heavily wooded slopes of the mountains. In Hori I
encountered a caravan of pilgrims returning from Mecca.

Thinking I was a physician and learning my haste to reach Ladak, they
invited me to join them, which I promised I would at Srinagar.

I spent an ill night, sitting up in my bed, with a lighted torch in my
hand, without closing my eyes, in constant fear of the stings and bites
of the scorpions and centipedes which swarm in the bengalows. I was
sometimes ashamed of the fear with which those vermin inspired me;
nevertheless, I could not fall asleep among them. Where, truly, in man,
is the line that separates courage from cowardice? I will not boast of
my bravery, but I am not a coward, yet the insurmountable fear with
which those malevolent little creatures thrilled me, drove sleep from my
eyelids, in spite of my extreme fatigue.

Our horses carried us into a flat valley, encircled by high mountains.
Bathed as I was in the rays of the sun, it did not take me long to fall
asleep in the saddle. A sudden sense of freshness penetrated and awoke
me. I saw that we had already begun climbing a mountain path, in the
midst of a dense forest, rifts in which occasionally opened to our
admiring gaze ravishing vistas, impetuous torrents; distant mountains;
cloudless heavens; a landscape, far below, of wondrous beauty. All about
us were the songs of numberless brilliantly plumaged birds. We came out
of the forest toward noon, descended to a little hamlet on the bank of
the river, and after refreshing ourselves with a light, cold collation,
continued our journey. Before starting, I went to a bazaar and tried to
buy there a glass of warm milk from a Hindu, who was sitting crouched
before a large cauldron full of boiling milk. How great was my surprise
when he proposed to me that I should take away the whole cauldron, with
its contents, assuring me that I had polluted the milk it contained! "I
only want a glass of milk and not a kettle of it," I said to him.

"According to our laws," t