evil HERE against thy very life,—­he envieth the lives of thine!...  A religious war now breweth in this land!...  SPIES haunt thy footsteps from the rising to the setting sun....  BEWARE lest thy fair daughters and thy wife shall disappear!...  Our prayers, sahib, shall attend thee; and our numerous eyes shall remain open to the PERILS as thou goest EAST where arms are open to receive thee,—­but see thou, sahib, THAT THOU DOST WALK DILIGENTLY IN THE DIRECTION OF THOSE ARMS!...

“...  The Lama backed away....  Never did he cease whirling the prayer wheel as he spoke ... this constitutes the perpetual prayer of Lamas, the theory being that the wheel communicates the petition to the air and, thus, mingled with the elements, it ascends naturally to the heaven of the blessed....  We were then conducted through a long row of very low rooms ornamented with a variety of Buddhist statues that have never been dusted nor apparently disturbed, to an open terrace which overlooked a dreary waste of gray rocks and broken ledges and offered to our view the slender roadway that lay like a ribbon across the plain until it faded into the golden glow of the Eastern horizon....  When I looked at that single road, and recalled the WARNING of the Lama so solemnly given to my ‘prisoner’ about the care to be given to his daughters, I REALIZED FULLY THE MEANING OF THE PRYING EYES that followed us everywhere after my encounter with the milk-fed MUSSULMAN disguised as a Hindu mendicant!...”

XIII

AN ENEMY IN PURSUIT

47.  Local color is given in this note: 

“We have had an exciting day....  The strategy one must sometimes employ in traveling through a hostile country is based upon the principle of deception....  It was the work of Maria too, who had evidently been reading up on certain occult works of the Eastern magicians and brought them into play at a moment when we were surrounded by a band of marauders in the company of my ‘Hindu’ friend....  To explain:  There is a certain kind of little animal held sacred among these strolling outlaws....  The possession of one of these animals is supposed to be a guarantee of future happiness as well as a protection against all danger....  They are very hard to entrap and the Ladakian Islamites will spend a month endeavoring to ensnare one....  We were quite a distance from the convent at Saspoula, where the road runs around among the rocks and turns back upon itself like a horseshoe in the wooded hills....  At one of these bends the pursuers had encamped ready to dash down upon us as we turned the bend and make away with the girls in the direction of their camp in the secluded mountain passes....  Maria had secured a number of those little animals, and, twisting a fine hairpin around one of their hind legs, she let one by one escape....  The animals clambered toward the higher elevations where the banditti lay in waiting....