able abundance of prayer-wheels. The lamas
demonstrated a particular pleasure in exhibiting these things, doing it
with the air of shopmen displaying their goods, with very little care
for the degree of interest the traveller may take in them. "We must show
everything, in the hope that the sight alone of these sacred objects
will force the traveller to believe in the divine grandeur of the human
soul."

Respecting the prophet Issa, they gave me the same account I already
had, and I learned, what I had known before, that the books which could
instruct me about him were at Lhassa, and that only the great
monasteries possessed some copies. I did not think any more of passing
Kara-koroum, but only of finding the history of the prophet Issa, which
would, perhaps, bring to light the entire life of the best of men, and
complete the rather vague information which the Gospels afford us about
him.

Not far from Leh, and at the entrance of the valley of the same name,
our road passed near an isolated rock, on the top of which were
constructed a fort--with two towers and without garrison--and a little
convent named Pitak. A mountain, 10,500 feet high, protects the entrance
to Thibet. There the road makes a sudden turn toward the north, in the
direction of Leh, six miles from Pitak and a thousand feet higher.
Immense granite mountains tower above Leh, to a height of 18,000 or
19,000 feet, their crests covered with eternal snow. The city itself,
surrounded by a girdle of stunted aspen trees, rises upon successive
terraces, which are dominated by an old fort and the palaces of the
ancient sovereigns of Ladak. Toward evening I made my entrance into Leh,
and stopped at a bengalow constructed especially for Europeans, whom the
road from India brings here in the hunting season.

Ladak

Ladak formerly was part of Great Thibet. The powerful invading forces
from the north which traversed the country to conquer Kachmyr, and the
wars of which Ladak was the theatre, not only reduced it to misery, but
eventually subtracted it from the political domination of Lhassa, and
made it the prey of one conqueror after another. The Musselmen, who
seized Kachmyr and Ladak at a remote epoch, converted by force the poor
inhabitants of old Thibet to the faith of Islam. The political existence
of Ladak ended with the annexation of this country to Kachmyr by the
seiks, which, however, permitted the Ladakians to return to their
ancient beliefs. Two-