At Zhad-uan, for instance, we were stopped and hurried before the Chinese governor of the town.
I thought that Mr. Mirrikh would take the initiative and suggested it.
“Show your passport,” he said. “Nothing else is necessary.”
I exhibited the paper to a fat mandarin with a tremendously long moustache, who sat before us on a bamboo chair, eating watermelon seeds and listening sleepily to his assistant who was interrogating Ah Schow.
It resulted just as usual. We had been through the same scene many times before, until now it had grown quite familiar.
The mandarin put on a pair of huge horn spectacles and glanced at the mysterious paper; his face giving no expression of his thoughts as he folded it up and handed it back.
“Peace be with you my lords lamas!” he said. “The way lies open before you—pass on.”
Easier said than done, for there are few countries on the face of the globe more difficult to travel in than eastern Thibet.
We were two days at Zhad-uan, staying at the hotel of Faith and Perseverance—so its name, translated, reads.
It required more faith than I possessed to make a hotel out of it, but there was a place for us to lie down and sleep, and that was about all we had looked for. Of course we had to cook for ourselves.
Down here in the valley the weather was warm and comfortable, but all around us we could see rising the snow capped peaks of the northern Himalayas, so we knew what we had to expect.
We started at daylight, presenting quite an imposing appearance as we rode through the crooked streets out of town.
Men stared, women and children crowded to the doors of the low, smoke begrimed houses; not a few beseeched our prayers as we passed, for Ah Schow, the rascal, had given it out that we were lamas whose prayers were most powerful, especially in healing the sick.
In fact we were often called upon to pray by these people and for that purpose each of us carried a copper prayer wheel which we ground industriously when occasion required, always winding up with the assurance that Buddha had heard and would grant the request.
